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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Revolutionary 'green' types of bricks and construction materials could be made from recycled PVC, waste plant fibers or sand with the help of a remarkable new kind of rubber polymer discovered by Australian scientists.
The rubber polymer, itself made from sulfur and canola oil, can be compressed and heated with fillers to create construction materials of the future, says a new paper unveiling a promising new technique just published in Chemistry—A European Journal.
"This method could produce materials that may one day replace non-recyclable construction materials, bricks and even concrete replacement," says organic chemistry researcher Flinders University Associate Professor Justin Chalker.
[...] "This new recycling method and new composites are an important step forward in making sustainable construction materials, and the rubber material can be repeatedly ground up and recycled," says lead author Flinders Ph.D. Nic Lundquist. "The rubber particles also can be first used to purify water and then repurposed into a rubber mat or tubing."
"This is also important because there are currently few methods to recycle PVC or carbon fiber," he says, with collaborators from Flinders, Deakin University and University of WA.
[...] The new manufacturing and recycling technique, called reactive compression molding, applies to rubber material that can be compressed and stretched, but one that doesn't melt. The unique chemical structure of the sulfur backbone in the novel rubber allows for multiple pieces of the rubber to bond together.
More information: Nicholas Lundquist et al. Reactive compression molding post‐inverse vulcanization: A method to assemble, recycle, and repurpose sulfur polymers and composites, Chemistry – A European Journal (2020). DOI: 10.1002/chem.202001841
(Score: 4, Informative) by captain normal on Tuesday May 26 2020, @10:50PM (3 children)
You want pictures? OK, but you may not like them cause you also have read through a lot of chemistry and engineering stuff with lots of math formulas. Stuff the average S/N code monkeys don't seem to like.
https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fchem.202001841&file=chem202001841-s1-Supporting_Information_for_Accepted_Article.pdf [wiley.com]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:38AM
I wonder why they're choosing to market it as bricks. If it could work as a plywood, and I don't see any reason it couldn't, that would be a lot more useful.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:45PM (1 child)
The paper doesn't compare the rubber polymer composite's profile with the building materials it's meant to replace, though.
Another thing that's not clear is the embodied carbon of this vs. the alternatives. If we're spending more energy to "recycle" these materials than it would cost to, say, make a regular brick, then are we really being green? Or, if we're recycling these materials to eliminate toxic waste or some such, then is the cost of the toxic waste greater than the cost of the energy to recycle the materials?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:10PM
Well it doesn't take near as much energy to process something at 170C, compared to 900C to 1200C required in a brick kiln.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--