As populations grew, the use of plastics grew as did plastic waste — one of the biggest threats to humanity, animals, and the environment.
While scientist and experts try to find solutions to non-recyclable plastic waste, we're running out of landfill sites and continue to poison our air by incinerating plastic waste and choking our oceans. Thankfully forward thinking companies are finding ways of reusing plastic waste while many others are focusing on finding biodegradable alternatives to replace plastics altogether.
As an example of recycling waste plastic, UK company MacRebur has developed a product by recycling plastic bottles to improve the quality, durability, and cost of asphalt roads.
While working with a charity in southern India that helps people working on landfill sites find items for possible re-use for selling or reusing, MacRebur CEO Toby McCartney was intrigued when he saw "pickers" using retrieved plastics to fill potholes. They melted the bottles onto the road by pouring diesel on it and setting it alight, resulting in an effective, quick, and low cost road repair.
From that basic idea the MacRebur team worked on finding the ideal mix of waste plastics to granulate and add into the making of asphalt roads. After years of tests and trials all over the world, MacRebur created three formulas of waste plastic and asphalt, all of which meet various worldwide road standards and have been rigorously tested against standard asphalt, bitumen, and Polymer Modified Bitumen.
MacRebur asphalt not only boosts the lifespan of roads, it also has a smaller carbon footprint by the reduced amount of fossil fuel used in the manufacturing process.
McCartney said:
We went through about five-to-six hundred different designs of different polymers that we were mixing in before we found one that actually worked.Only plastic labelled as waste — which includes black plastic — is used and it must melt at a specific temperature. Roads made with the plastic additive should last longer, be more flexible, and withstand damage from heat, cold, and everyday use better.
According to McCartney, plastic roads are 60% stronger than traditional roads and lab tests project they may last up to three times longer. Of course, only the test of time will determine if they actually meet the estimated lifespan.
McCartney added:
We are wanting to solve two world problems. On one side we call it the waste plastic epidemic, and on the other side the poor quality of roads that we have to drive on today.The MacRebur mixture is also suitable for motorways, airport runways, race tracks, and car parks.
Reader Comments
What's your point ?
Mine is that the recycled plastics in question are bound, by melt, into the road surface bitumen, itself another polymer. Given that, and unless you do some real study of the matter, you can't be saying the because there is what once was "plastic" bound into the bitumen, a new polymer material let's remember, that the plastic(s) will degrade in sunlight as they are known to in their earlier "incarnation(s)".
that is what i was getting at. sorry i was not more clear. (not being sarcastic).
Lab turns trash into valuable graphene in a flash
A new process introduced by the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour can turn bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into valuable graphene flakes. The process is quick and cheap; Tour said the "flash graphene" technique can convert a ton of coal, food waste or plastic into graphene for a fraction of the cost used by other bulk graphene-producing methods."This is a big deal," Tour said. "The world throws out 30% to 40% of all food, because it goes bad, and plastic waste is of worldwide concern. We've already proven that any solid carbon-based matter, including mixed plastic waste and rubber tires, can be turned into graphene."As reported in Nature, flash graphene is made in 10 milliseconds by heating carbon-containing materials to 3,000 Kelvin (about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit). The source material can be nearly anything with carbon content. Food waste, plastic waste, petroleum coke, coal, wood clippings and biochar are prime candidates - [Link]
I am working hard to (re)develop a material made in the late '70s that had 2/3 the mass density of aluminium, the same flexural Young's modulus, 25 times the tan delta and thermoformed at 200 C.
The original was PVC-based and while I will replicate that to begin, I want to ultimately use one of the polyetherimides for its far higher glass transition temp.
The original material used crystalline graphite w/o, as far as I know to date, any significant exfoliation. I waiting on some Raman data to confirm that.
What I'll do is exfoliate in-situ to greater or lesser degree by means of an inline post-extruder exfoliator I have conceived but not POP-d as yet (Proof of Principle-d), but it'll work fine.
From there, it's endless lab work by Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) to find an optimum amoung the alternative graphite allotropes, i.e. high aspect ratio natural graphite micro-flake, multi-layer (2D) and and 1D graphene.
That done, or along the way, I want to develop a much better material for pressing vinyl records than the various PCV blends used for the last about 70 years. Graphene will figure largely.
High performance, low cost loudspeaker diaphragms are my target market.
What C/O value you shootin' for?
Sbc
I've located a good, used Rheometrics DMA with software and also an as-new >$US100K Mettler-Toledo DMA for <$US0.10 on the dollar w/o software, which will be a $US25K touch.
Raman capability I'll likely build using the work of these folks in Peru [Link] which these days can be built for about $US2K. A Spanish YouTube is here [Link] .
An alternative is a device from Thunder Optics in France [Link]
Viryl Technologies in Toronto scratch-produce automatic record presses, along with SSEs to suit [Link] Those guys have. their. act. together.
As to the allotrope for polyetheimide 'vinyl' records, I don't yet know. C60 fullerenes look interesting but cost-wise they're still far, far over the top.
To answer what I think was your question: functionalized graphene is a costly, complex mess to deal with and I don't expect to go anywhere near it.
You know i was just jesting
Of course, that was in the PTB's plan even back when R.M. came out.
R.C.