30-03-2024, 08:17 PM
31-03-2024, 09:21 AM
A great initiative that is working to address the difficulties in recycling plastics economically. The problems that they've got to address are contamination, including by non-target plastics, the amount of energy required vs the value of the end product gained and the logistics involved in the collection process of the waste plastics.
From what I understand these guys are reversing the original plastics' manufacturing processes in order to revert the plastics back to their original feedstocks therefore they are essentially competing with the original production system so must produce an end product that is economically (and environmentally) viable on that basis. As energy generation becomes cheaper that may play to their advantage particularly as the virgin plastic producers are increasingly handicapped by the taxation imposed on their environmentally harmful processes which includes burning of their own hydrocarbons to partially fuel their systems. Countries such as NZ with smaller and more thinly distributed population will also struggle as the economies of scale and collection volumes fall short of those that present economic viability meaning populations need to upskilled and be motivated to contribute towards the process.
It does amuse me that Americans so often derive their own usage of words that are so familiar to the rest of the English speaking world. What is it that causes them to revert to spelling and/or pronunciations such as 'bittoomin' or 'aluminum'?
From what I understand these guys are reversing the original plastics' manufacturing processes in order to revert the plastics back to their original feedstocks therefore they are essentially competing with the original production system so must produce an end product that is economically (and environmentally) viable on that basis. As energy generation becomes cheaper that may play to their advantage particularly as the virgin plastic producers are increasingly handicapped by the taxation imposed on their environmentally harmful processes which includes burning of their own hydrocarbons to partially fuel their systems. Countries such as NZ with smaller and more thinly distributed population will also struggle as the economies of scale and collection volumes fall short of those that present economic viability meaning populations need to upskilled and be motivated to contribute towards the process.
It does amuse me that Americans so often derive their own usage of words that are so familiar to the rest of the English speaking world. What is it that causes them to revert to spelling and/or pronunciations such as 'bittoomin' or 'aluminum'?
01-04-2024, 07:58 PM
It could be an economical solution if oil production dries up in the future perhaps?
Also depends on the chemicals involved, but from what I can make from it, it appears that it uses some sort of catalyst and is essentially breaking the polymer chains back into their individual building blocks and can be repurposed back into new polymers,.
It seems that some contaminants such as the paper labels etc may be advantageous in the process, not too sure how they separate out various additives such as plasticizers but it seems they have a way to purify it, looks like some form of distillation.
If it can be scaled up, it could work out well.
The biggest issue with plastics is that the oil industry heavily promoted the use, since it's a way to move on oil byproducts, and single use plastic means they can keep selling the stuff.
Also depends on the chemicals involved, but from what I can make from it, it appears that it uses some sort of catalyst and is essentially breaking the polymer chains back into their individual building blocks and can be repurposed back into new polymers,.
It seems that some contaminants such as the paper labels etc may be advantageous in the process, not too sure how they separate out various additives such as plasticizers but it seems they have a way to purify it, looks like some form of distillation.
If it can be scaled up, it could work out well.
The biggest issue with plastics is that the oil industry heavily promoted the use, since it's a way to move on oil byproducts, and single use plastic means they can keep selling the stuff.