An oil refinery in central China's Hunan province has recently won high praise from domestic environmental experts for its use of waste plastic products as raw materials.

Currently, the refinery can convert 30,000 tons of waste plastic into 20,000 tons of gasoline and diesel oil in line with the state's standards.

Wang Xu, who built the refinery and has been called the "garbage king," used to pick bits of waste plastic from rubbish heaps in 1980. In the ensuing years, he became involved in waste processing.

With a total investment of 2.6 million yuan, Wang established an oil refinery in 1999 which successfully converts plastic waste into useful resources.

Since then, Wang has achieved widespread public support for his work. Zeng Guangming, a doctoral tutor of Hunan University, advised Wang on the sort of scientific technology required for decomposing the waste plastic products.

After the completion of the first production line, which incorporated Japanese technology, last June, Wang suffered a setback when he found the oil produced by the line contained dregs of carbon dioxide, which would easily clog automobile engines.

Zeng offered to improve the production technologies and facilities, and soon the gasoline and diesel oil made in the refinery were up to state standards, passing the examination of the Hunan Technological Supervision Bureau and Hunan Quality Test Center.

This June, Wang built a second line using Zeng's design, which has greatly improved production efficiency.

Now, Wang's refinery can turn one-fifth of the plastic waste in Changsha into high-quality oil.

(People's Daily December 14, 2001)