backyard scientist’s homemade pyrolysis reactor

Picture this: a 21-year-old backyard scientist in Alabama, Julian Brown, sweeps away some dirt and leaves from his homemade solar- and generator-powered, 10-magnetron-powered pyrolysis microwave reactor probably running at around 8 kW or more, before nuking a pile of plastic bags, laundry detergent bottles, milk jugs, and other scraps of household plastic that would have otherwise gone to landfill. He then sludges out an unrefined goop-like substance that looks similar to blown head gasket oil (like chunky chocolate milk) before starting the “refinement process” to produce a gasoline alternative he calls “plastoline.”

Just check out this YouTube short and it will paint the full picture.

The refining process is simple distillation but with a lot of unnecessary pouring from one beaker to another to another … all under a carport atop a gravel driveway in the backyard of his house.

NatureJab, Brown’s social media name, has been slowly gaining traction on the internet and local news outlets. His actual company is called Jab’s Pyrolysis & Energy Recovery.

Brown has a heap of videos on YouTube showing himself using the various reactors he has designed and built himself. After watching quite a few videos, they are very disorganized and hard to follow exactly. Lots of ranting and dancing and random cuts. He does have a video from three years ago where he breaks down his thoughts, basically saying he wants to use microwave pyrolysis to create fuel from plastics using renewable energy sources like solar and wind and be carbon neutral while doing so.

While he has a half dozen or more solar panels strewn about the backyard, you can almost always hear a generator running in his videos, so he hasn’t reached carbon neutrality quite yet – and let’s not bring up all the toxic fumes being released into the air. I imagine the EPA would be quite upset.

Brown agrees that it’s true that plastic pyrolysis creates a lot of carbon emissions; however, he believes that the act of recycling plastic – collection, sorting, and transporting of plastics to be recycled – creates more.

“[Pyrolysis is] not rocket science. It has fewer steps, less transportation, and fewer emissions. Simple,” says then 18-year-old Brown. And in regards to the toxic gases released, “Scrubbers and filters can be used to catch any toxic products. And chemical processes and fancy things can convert these toxic products into valuable products.”

Brown agrees with the law of thermodynamics that, yes, the energy input will always be higher than the energy output in pyrolysis, but plastics are energy-dense and contain many types of valuable products, not just “plastoline.” He believes that microwave pyrolysis using renewable energy is the safest and easiest way of eliminating plastic waste that is untreatable, unrecyclable, or destined to end up in our oceans and landfills.

From what I’ve been able to glean from his plethora of videos, Brown is on his “Mark 4.5 reactor” iteration that will use 10 magnetrons taken from microwaves. I say “will,” because as of earlier this month, he’s posted a video grinding out his waveguides for his newest reactor.

With his previous edition, he stuffs a heap of mixed, unsorted, and dirty plastic into his reactor before zapping it for four to five hours. He collects the “crude” from the reactor before running it through a vacuum distillation process – using a ShopVac, no less – to produce “plastoline,” a gasoline/diesel/jet fuel alternative.

He recently demoed a carbureted classic truck running entirely on plastoline in front of a small crowd in Houston, Texas. As you can see in the video, it wasn’t a particularly controlled or scientific environment, with a paint bucket filled his alternative fuel dangling from the grill of the truck.

Brown has at least two active GoFundMe campaigns that I’ve unearthed. One of which, created in April of 2025, has raised nearly US$29,000 of his $16,000 goal and lists a 20-kW solar inverter (for converting solar panel DC power into AC), 60 kWh of lithium batteries, a charge controller, and various wires for his solar array as equipment he will buy with the funds. His previous and ongoing campaign was started in January 2023 and has garnered just over $17,000 of his lofty one-million-dollar goal to continue funding his work on plastoline.

Brown did have at least one accident in May of 2024 with his DIY process: His distiller wasn’t under vacuum as he’d designed it and flammable vapors ignited, causing an explosion. He was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and was barefoot at the time, and the explosion was directed at his feet. He suffered pretty severe second-degree burns from it.

Undaunted and armed with an understanding of what went wrong, he continued his work on plastoline.

In December 2024, three samples of plastoline were sent to popular YouTuber Ben Katz, who runs the channel Mass Spec Everything. He’s a proteomics specialist and staff scientist at the University of California, Irvine, in the Mass Spectrometry Facility.

His brief video breaking down the results of the sampled material focused mainly on the safety of dealing with the mix rather than the contents. His GC-MS analysis showed high levels of styrene and other BTEX compounds – toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene – all of which are arguably more hazardous than typical gasoline ingredients.

“You’re basically making BTEX gas is essentially what you’re doing here,” says Katz. “I don’t want to squash any of your hard work, your scientific spirit, and your dedication to all the great things that you’re doing. Just as an analytical chemist that gets to see the real data, I want to urge caution – and proper PPE – and making sure that, you know, you don’t get sick, man. I’m just … I’m just a little concerned for your safety.”

Plastic pyrolysis is not a new concept. Back in the 1970s, during the oil crisis, scientists were exploring the thermal decomposition of polymers – especially polyethylene and polypropylene – as a means of reclaiming hydrocarbons. It wasn’t until the 2000s, though, that it became commercially viable through improvements in technology – and environmental pushes on what to do with all this plastic waste we now have.

For example, in 2019, the Sparta Group partnered with Phoenix Canada to convert plastics into fuels. The company says 5 tons of plastic can be refined into about 4,000 liters (1,057 gal) of fuel using pyrolysis. The company uses the fuel it produces for its fleet of 10 trucks that go out and collect all this otherwise non-recycled plastic waste in a closed-loop ecosystem as a practical proof-of-concept. Its facility is designed to handle up to 18,000 tons of plastic per year.

RES Polyflow is another such company that has the capacity to process 100,000 tons of plastic waste per year and produce up to 18 million gallons (68 million liters) of diesel fuel and naphtha blend stocks – ingredients that go into gasoline.

Today, there are a number of companies that specialize in thermal degradation depolymerization methods to convert plastic into liquid hydrocarbons – gasoline, synthetic diesel, kerosene, and oil. Other products too, like carbon black, wax, methane, butane, ammonia, chemical feedstocks … the list goes on.

The thing that makes Julian Brown’s story interesting is that he’s taking on an already billion-dollar industry from his backyard with a welder and a dream. And two crispy feet.

Source: NatureJab

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