Argonauts Disposal

Argonauts disposal is meant to cheapen the costs of plastic management operations through the transformation of plastic into energy.

In Jalisco, Mexico we have a serious issue with waste management and production. According to “El Economista '' Jalisco, Mexico is one of the major plastic producers (50% of all plastics in Mexico) and consumers in all the country. Mexico has several laws detailing the infrastructure and day to day operations of solid waste landfills, but these aren't being followed (Gerardo Bernache, 2010).

Properly maintaining the waste management operations required by law can be very expensive “The direct transport of waste is inefficient due to the cost of fuel, wasted man hours, wear of vehicle fleet and general operating costs. Ideally, 85% of the MSW should be managed via transfer” (Bernache, 2013).

As a result of this poor management, plastics and other solid wastes are finding their way into our drainage, lakes, ecosystems and even our bodies through the food chain. For example, the Tonala government wrongfully placed a landfill near the Matatlan population, for it to be closed later, resulting in people having to live with trash all over the streets.

Argonauts disposal plans to reduce operation costs for recycling companies by providing a cheap energy source made from the materials they already work with.

We built a furnace that can transform plastic waste into an energy source. Our machine has three main parts; the heater, the condenser, and the recollection unit. As fancy as this may sound it's quite simple. 

The heater is a heating chamber made of stainless steel and a ceramic fiber meant to isolate the heat, making it safer to operate and energetically efficient, it is heated by two electrical resistances that reach a temperature of around 350ºC.

For the condenser we used a tub, stainless steel pipeline and water, and for the recollection unit we attached a hose and a glass container.

To operate it you deposit plastic into the heater and turn it on. The heated plastic will transform into a gas and travel through the condenser, where it will transform into a liquid. The liquid that comes out is not useful as is, it requires a settling and distillation process.

We work with two main populations. Recycling companies and young adults ages 20-30 that live near unregulated landfills. We are planning to hire people living near landfills and help alleviate operating costs from already existing recycling companies, currently we are talking with a local recycling operation looking for ways to incorporate our process.

Every team member is a technologist in an engineering area, Emmanuel and Javier are Machine tool technologists, and Jacob is a pharmaceutical technologist. Because of the type of high school we were in, we all have received classes in different manufacturing methods like welding, material science and the specifics of how plastics are manufactured. 

Although our team does not live near a landfill we can all see the harming effects it has on the nearby populations, thanks to our backgrounds in engineering at a technical high school we were able to develop the PyroReactor.

We know our community has this problem because we are part of the population and can see it in our day to day. We have been in the floodings caused by the stagnant drainage systems and seen the trash in our commutes to school and work.

For our potential users we are currently talking with a recycling company that operates in our community, we are looking for ways we can become a part of their operation next year.

The current focus in the Mexican market is the sale of fuel directly to consumers at gas stations, as the PetGas company does in Cancun. Our proposal has a more social focus because instead of working with consumers we want to work with recycling operations in Guadalajara, to lower operating costs.

In 2024 we plan to patent our project and start the company, with which we hope to employ at least 5 people and reduce the cost of gasoline consumption of at least one recycling operation in Guadalajara.

Our team developed a pyrolysis reactor. A pyrolysis reactor is a type of furnace that breaks down long chains of hydrocarbons. It is a way of incinerating plastic and condensing the resulting gasses, with which we obtain a hydrocarbon that can be refined into various types of fuel.

The reactor has 3 main parts, the furnace, the condenser and the collection unit. The oven is a stainless steel pot in which we placed 2 electrical resistances and an insulating layer, the condenser is a series of pipes through which the gas passes and condenses, and the collection unit is a plastic tank from which we get the sample.

Our goal is to directly help 5 people, which are the ones we plan to employ.

We are looking into the permits required to operate, hiring personnel, and perfecting the purification and refining of our fuel.

We don't currentlñy work with any other partner

We as a company offer an alternative to conventional gasoline. Our product is a version of gasoline that does not require extraction from the ground and reduces the amount of plastics in the community.

More specifically, we want to work with the recycling operations since they are the ones who work with our raw material and facilitate our manufacturing.

We want to become part of the recycling operation, partner with the recycling plant so that they supply us with a certain amount of plastic in exchange for producing fuel and a certain amount of money.