Endlessly recyclable plastic (Javascript required.)
By separating plastic monomers from chemical additives, researchers may have created fully recyclable plastics.
Molecular scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed a new type of plastic: polydiketoenamine, or PDK. When immersed in an acidic solution, PDK monomers were broken down and were freed from the additive compounds used in plastic production.
Berkeley Lab staff scientist Brett Helms said: "With PDKs, the immutable bonds of conventional plastics are replaced with reversible bonds that allow the plastic to be recycled more effectively."
Commercial plastics generally contain additives such as dyes or fillers to make them hard, stretchy, coloured or clear. The problem is these additives have different chemical compositions and are hard to separate from the monomers.
Also at Berkeley Lab.
See also: Researchers develop plastic that they are calling the 'Holy Grail' of recycling
This infinitely-recyclable plastic might help us finally clean up landfills and oceans
Closed-loop recycling of plastics enabled by dynamic covalent diketoenamine bonds (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-019-0249-2) (DX)
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday May 09 2019, @10:57AM (5 children)
Maybe you acquired a taste for dioxins [www.wecf.eu]? Styrene perhaps? Or is it you just can't live without furans, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls? [sciencedirect.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @12:43PM (4 children)
Ever heard of pyrolysis? I'm not sure if it's just plain ignorance here, but if you are burning properly, you don't get any furans or dioxins. Those are *fuels*. No one is advocating you burn your garbage on a pile.
https://phys.org/news/2013-12-plastic-cleanly-natural-gas.html [phys.org]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-14/how-would-burning-rubbish-like-sweden-work-in-australia/10115694 [abc.net.au]
The reality is plastic burns the same as oil. And if you burn oil or tar at low temperature, you get same shit as from burning plastics.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday May 09 2019, @01:16PM (3 children)
Wonder why all the pyrolosis startups gets belly-up if not subsidized?
Because the energy required to break the polymers into smaller components makes a very low profit commercial application.
If the plastic comes dirty and/or wet, you have a big problem in your hand - not only you'll consume more energy, but the pyrolysis reaction of plastic get "poisoned" - you'll obtain a big lump of char with too little liquid or volatile compounds.
Even more, it depends a lot on the type of plastic: feed PVC into the reactor and you'll ruin it and you'll need to install scrubbers; 'cause, you see that ending C? It stands for chlorine - not a nice gas when heated to 800C.
---
In the very link you picked from abc.net.au
Which sorta contradicts the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday May 09 2019, @04:46PM
The Ralph Nader Enviro Nuts, since the 70s, have been screaming for the ban on Poly Vinyl Chloride. Also known as, PVC. Because, "oh, cancer!" We've been using that one for so long, where is the cancer? But they did the ban in Nassau County. Not the whole county, little town called Glen Cove. Very small and, it's going to stay that way. You go (foolishly) to the restaurant in Glen Cove. And, you ask for the take out container. Sorry, they can't give it to you. No PVC allowed and they can't do the Styrofoam either. It's absolutely killing the economy there. They made a dumb move, too bad. But, don't worry. We will NEVER do that for the Federal!!!!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:45PM (1 child)
It's a burning process. You just add oxygen.
But in either case, the purpose of burning properly is not to be economically competitive with gas powered plants that gets its fuel from a pipeline. The purpose is to reduce garbage and harm that it causes. I hope you agree that harm reduction is priority before we can have some panacea solution to this problem?
TFS gives us academic lego block in solving a tiny portion of the issue. But it does nothing for policy or solution to the plastic problem.
That's true - it's reactive. But this problem is solved, long time ago.
https://waste-management-world.com/a/pvc-to-burn-or-not-to-burn [waste-management-world.com]
Also, we have technology to monitor these emissions. And as you can see, coal is the problem, not garbage burning.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=so2smass/orthographic=-78.02,25.18,427 [nullschool.net]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 09 2019, @10:33PM
It's a burning process. You just add oxygen.
Pyrolysis [wikipedia.org] is not burning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford