The world is drowning in plastic. Experts say we need to stop making so much. But the plastics industry is peddling a “solution” that works like magic. Don’t be fooled.

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   Now, the industry is heralding nothing short of a miracle: an “advanced”type of recycling known as pyrolysis — “pyro” means fire and “lysis” means separation.

   NASA is not in “the industry” NASA spends half their budget looking DOWN at Earth.

   **Taking Out the Trash, NASA-StylePlasma arc technology for testing heat shields transforms garbage into reusable chemicals**

   [https://spinoff.nasa.gov/plasma-heating-recycles-waste](https://spinoff.nasa.gov/plasma-heating-recycles-waste)

   **Pyrolysis processing for solid waste resource recovery**

   [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20080009505](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20080009505)

   Solid waste resource recovery in space is effected by pyrolysis processing, to produce light gases as the main products (CH.sub.4, H.sub.2, CO.sub.2, CO, H.sub.2O, NH.sub.3) and a reactive carbon-rich char as the main byproduct. Significant amounts of liquid products are formed under less severe pyrolysis conditions, and are cracked almost completely to gases as the temperature is raised. A primary pyrolysis model for the composite mixture is based on an existing model for whole biomass materials, and an artificial neural network models the changes in gas composition with the severity of pyrolysis conditions.

   **Hydrogen Recovery by Methane Pyrolysis to Elemental Carbon**

   [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20190030371](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20190030371)

   **Vapor phase pyrolysis**

   [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930007702](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930007702)

   > It uses heat to break plastic all the way down to its molecular building blocks.

   let’s make sure we define heat… this is the kind of heat we need heat shields for… so spacecraft don’t burn up when coming home. it’s not “fire” – these kinds of temperatures do not happen on Earth naturally.

   [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification)

   Pressurized inert gas is [ionized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionization) passing through the plasma created by the arc. **The torch’s temperature ranges from 2,000 to 14,000 °C (3,600 to 25,200 °F).**[^([4])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification#cite_note-recoveredenergy-4) The temperature of the plasma reaction determines the structure of the plasma and forming gas

   creating the energy to generate that kind of heat/pressure is expensive.

   **but it works.**

   [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification_commercialization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification_commercialization)

   **Plasma gasification is in commercial use** as a [waste-to-energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy) system that converts municipal solid waste, tires, hazardous waste, and sewage sludge into synthesis gas ([syngas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas)) containing hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be used to generate power. Municipal-scale waste disposal plasma arc facilities have been in operation in Japan and China since 2002. No commercial implementations in Europe and North America have succeeded so far.