Man invents machine to convert plastic into oil

This is our second video from the Our World series, exploring radical solutions to some of our greatest technological problems. Here we see a Japanese scientist who is looking to solve the problem of how to dispose of our huge amounts of petroleum-based, plastic trash.

I want to know what 'gas' he's speaking of at 2:00.

...and how long the processing of 1kg of plastic takes...

...how much energy has to be put into the machine to heat the plastic as compared to the energy density of the oil that comes out...

...if the process is scalable...

...why we aren't using this process already...