Oil from plastic

[Richard]

I just wanted to have an idea of the efficiency of this process because I'm a geek.

With my social hat on I can also see there are competing demands for various energy sources which require a balance of technical efficiency alongside the sometimes conflicting priorities of society. That's a completely different topic, so can anyone appease us technical folk wanting to know about this process? Otherwise I'll assume its one of the magic energy schemes that is one step away from perpetual energy.

[Richard]

This is meant to be a thread about turning plastic into oil. It should have been a fascinating topic. Random facts about the length of straw and "the bogeyman is evil" have been deleted.

The questions really are very simple - how does this work, how much energy does this process use?