Gaza resident builds plant that returns plastic to fuel

A Gaza resident has built a high-tech plant from basic equipment to turn used plastic remains to its origin; fuel.

It took Ibrahim Soboh, 55, from the Nusairat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip, seven months to build and perfect the plant.

Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip lead to many essential goods running out, pushing the residents to Gaza to invent new machines with basic equipment to try to find alternatives.

Soboh refused to disclose the secret of his invention but said the idea came to his mind as he knows that plastic is made of fuel and plastic remains, which used to be exported to Egypt through tunnels, are accumulating in huge amounts.

In his plant, Soboh melts plastic by heating it until it becomes vapour. The vapour is condensed in the same machine and becomes fuel.

According to Soboh, every 1.5 kilogrammes of ground plastic gives one litre of fuel. The new fuel is used to run electricity generators, cars and other machines which operate on oil.

The next stage for Soboh is to search for donors to set up a big plant to be able to reuse tonnes of plastic remains accumulated in large stores in the Strip. He believes this will solve two problems; it encourages plastic recycling and finds a way to help with the fuel crisis.

MEMO Photographer: Mohammed Asad

Note: more images were added to this collection at 17.07 GMT+1 on April 10, 2014

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