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When Is A Plastic No Longer A Plastic?
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by mgmirkin | November 25, 2008 at 08:12 pm
276 views | 38 Recommendations | 16 comments
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It sounds like a riddle doesn't it? Well, in some ways it is. Plastic is an increasing burden on our landfills and recycling efforts. Wouldn't it be great if we could just zap the plastic and make it go away? Well, yes!
The answer to the riddle has apparently been demonstrated by Global Resource Corporation: a plastic is no longer a plastic when you zap it with 1200 frequencies of microwaves tuned to interact with hydrocarbons!
Quite literally, the plastic melts and/or reverts back into a liquid and/or gaseous state, in the form of diesel, combustible gas and whatever non-hydrocarbon materials may have been included in the product.
A US company is taking plastics recycling to another level - turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas.
All that is needed, claims Global Resource Corporation (GRC), is a finely tuned microwave and - hey presto! - a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers).
Key to GRC's process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas.
"Anything that has a hydrocarbon base will be affected by our process," says Jerry Meddick, director of business development at GRC, based in New Jersey. "We release those hydrocarbon molecules from the material and it then becomes gas and oil."
Whatever does not have a hydrocarbon base is left behind, minus any water it contained as this gets evaporated in the microwave.
This follows on the heels of another new waste disposal technology utilizing plasma (the fourth state of matter after solids, liquids and gases).
It seems these are the ways of the future!
Though, one jokingly hopes the no equivalent technology can be adapted that works on living flesh in a similar way or we may have just invented our first 'death ray'...
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (16)
at 20:34 on November 25th, 2008
Great Post and would go well with Amy her post about the new Mac Book being the most eco friendly one on the market or so they claim.
at 20:48 on November 25th, 2008
Yeah, actually, I'd posted the link to the NS article over there, I think? Then figured I should probably pop out a news blurb on it.
~Michael
at 21:01 on November 25th, 2008
Wow - I guess this would take a huge microwave though! Or some sort of microwave machine!
at 22:40 on November 25th, 2008
One can assume they can engineer (and have) a machine capable of doing this? Granted it may be complex. But, engineers are ingenious little devils, and will probably find a way to make it moderately efficient, smaller, better, cheaper...
at 22:47 on November 25th, 2008
Yes, they will, Being an Engineer my self, :) thanks for the confidence in the profession. however would that not be keeping us on the wrong track? Should we not start to Reduce consumption, Reuse what we have and Recycle the rest into some thing new with out a huge new energy burning machine? We have to start thinking of total cost and this would mean taking into account not only energy used to produce a product but also its environmental long term impact and cost.
at 21:23 on November 25th, 2008
INformation overload, all we humans need is try to be eco friendly.Technology cannot solve its own mistakes.
at 22:26 on November 25th, 2008
Very good point Amitjha. Less does and would in this case help a lot. Ecology does also mean to live with in our given limits and not on credit as we have been doing for now over two centuries. Fossil fuel is a form of credit since we can not ever pay this back with in one or even one hundred generations.
at 22:43 on November 25th, 2008
Well, in this case, maybe it CAN... ;o) To some extent. IE, rather than burying plastics in the ground for millions of years, we can just zap 'em, turn 'em into diesel and other stuff and dispose of them in better ways...
We'll see how it all shapes up!
at 23:26 on November 25th, 2008
There was also this story back in May about a Canadian schoolboy who discovered a bacteria that could rapidly degrade plastic.
I wonder how energy efficient bombarding plastic with high-power microwaves would be. How much energy is needed to generate those microwaves?
at 09:56 on November 26th, 2008
A good story there. Thanks! I also vaguely recall a story for a year or two (or 5) ago that had mentioned bacteria that had been found or grown to feed on petroleum as a possible way to clean up the environment after an oil spill or for otherwise biodegrading the stuff safely. Will have to see if I can track it down. Seems like the combination would be another way about getting rid of plastics.
One wonders, as you say, how energy efficient the microwave solution is and how much material can be recovered / recycled, etc. Would there be impurities that would make it undesirable? I'd think that places like dumps would be able to utilize such a technology to reduce the amount that actually goes into landfill. IE, fill up a big ol' compactor full of plastic, then turn the microwaves on it and melt it down. One might assume that economies of scale could take over? IE, turn the microwaves on a larger pile of plastics and break it all down at once? Granted one wonders about safety of such a system (on account of combustible gases and diesel)...
at 10:26 on November 26th, 2008
In fact, now that I've Googled 'oil eating bacteria' and 'plastic eating bacteria' it seems there's quite a bit of literature on the usefulness of bacteria in many aspects of the oil / plastic cycle.
(Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece
(Bacteria Turn Toxins Into Plastic)
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/09/64862
(La Brea yields oil-eating bacteria)
http://www.geotimes.org/july07/article.html?id=nn_bacteria.html
(Strain of oil-eating bacteria isolated)
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-03/20/content_832106.htm
Apparently oil-eating bacteria were known and studied at least as far back as 1992:
(Scientists Study Makeup of Oil-Eating Bacteria)
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1992/bacteria-0401.html
And then there's the kid from Canada with the microbes lunching on plastics:
(WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags)
http://news.therecord.com/article/354044
(Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months)
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/teen-decomposes.html
So, it seems like bacteria are perhaps part of the future of the petrol / plastic / recycling market? What with the microwave, plasma and bacterial options available these days, it seems like the future may be looking up for doing a better job at managing certain wastes.
Regards,
~Michael Gmirkin
at 02:35 on November 26th, 2008
When we realize that there is no waste in the world, but we have only materials.
at 04:32 on November 26th, 2008
I have to assume the energy balance isn't favorable, meaning that it probably takes much more energy to break down the plastic than one could recover from the resulting hydrocarbons.
None the less, the problem of discarded plastics is huge. This technology seems like a promising way to deal with the waste problem, and to potentially recover some energy as well.
at 04:41 on November 26th, 2008
That was my prior point and there for does not make sense. We can melt and reshape most plastics with less energy, still even there the energy balance is not yet favourable either. However as mentioned before here as well, bacteria do work and so does reusing it for other application such as a post from India here on NP last week that made carpets with the plastic from Garbage dumps.
at 05:24 on November 26th, 2008
Those who haven't done so should check out a dump. It's mind-blowing just how much stuff gets thrown away, and how hidden these collective leavings are from those who tossed them.
at 05:34 on November 26th, 2008
The best way still, here is to stop using plastic and only using Bio degradable material or to charge so much for the plastic that we can finance its recycling and at the same time reduce consumption.