Industrial oil obtained from plastic and rubber waste, project financed by EU funds

A factory close to southeastern Tulcea municipality produces industrial oil from plastic and rubber waste and it is the only private ecological investment operational as of this year in the county, with a total budget of 1 million Euro, financed from European funds. The idea of this business belonged to the company's administrator, Bogdan Gheorghe, who said that the biggest challenge was obtaining the environment authorization. "The purpose is to manufacture industrial oils. As raw material we use waste from plastic and rubber, products that are thrown away and which we reuse and give value to. We are trying to give some sort of utility to waste", declared, for AGERPRES, 35 year old engineer Bogdan Gheorghe, graduate of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. In the warehouse of the former potato research station, which is 7 kilometers away from the Tulcea Municipality, waste decomposes in large containers, and the process was explained by the initiator. "All rubber and plastic waste are polymers from petroleum products. We are inverting the process. We decompose the waste in raw materials, we purify them and give them a different value. In that reactor we add plastic and rubber waste, and in a closed and heated atmosphere, they decompose. First we get a primary condensed oil. A part of the product is transformed in synthetic gas which help us heating up the reactor, so that the process is self-sustaining. After the primary oil is formed, it is refined in the second installation", the young investor added. The industrial oil plant started working last month, employs 6 persons, the oldest of all being Petrica Alexe, 62, who continues to learn alongside his colleagues. "I worked in the ferro-alloy plant, at the foundry and I'm accustomed with the equipment. Here, I supervise the production process. There are things that we learn as we go. For me, this is something new and challenging", Petrica Alexe said. According to Bogdan Gheorghe, the industrial oil factory, made from plastic and rubber waste has a total capacity of 10 tons of industrial oil per day, paraffin being a secondary product that could be used for the manufacture of candles. Roughly 30% of the budget of the ecological investment represents the co-financing ensured by the initiator.AGERPRES(RO - author: Luisiana Bigea, editor: Marius Fratila; EN - author: Catalin Cristian Trandafir, editor: Maria Voican)