I was uneconomical ten years ago as well. Back the
Post# of 43064
So even if ten years ago PTOI's oil optimistically ended up being pure salable diesel (about 7 lbs per gallon) with a spot price of diesel around $2.50/gallon then, it would have still cost $3.11/gallon to produce that gallon at PTOI. That ignores all other of PTOI's costs except the cost of scrap plastic.
And if PTOI could somehow have obtained free plastic like they said, they could have sold that scrap plastic to recyclers for $0.40/lb and been wildly profitable, rather than running it through the machine first and subtracting value.
Even under ideal theoretical conditions, the math simply doesn't work. Today oil is much, much cheaper which means scrap plastic will also be much, much cheaper...but the math still doesn't work. Oil and plastic prices are obviously highly correlated since plastic is made from oil. Turning scrap plastic into oil is uneconomical.
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