Plastic recycling clearly seen
Researchers at Cambridge University in England have developed a way to use discarded plastic and CO2 to make syngas and glycolic acid. Translated to regular American talk, they are taking recycled water bottles and the breath you exhale to make fuel for heating and oily chemicals that are used in manufacturing. While the system is in its very early stages, they have found a chemical mixture that when put into their little reactor will give them a variety of oil-like outputs. There is a factory just across the Ohio border in Indiana that recycles water bottles using lots of heat and electrical energy to make diesel fuel. What the Brits have done is streamline the process so that it requires very little energy to run and mostly can be driven by sunlight.
Most of our plastics are made from natural gas and oil. By using lots of heat refiners separate the parts of the oil and then combine these parts to make the plastic we are used to seeing. You may have seen the gigantic acres of garbage plastic floating in the ocean. Currently only about 5% of what you put into the recycling bin ever really gets recycled. The recycled waste gets put on a conveyor system that sorts out the metal and clean glass and the rest is sent overseas for hand sorting or just bailed and put into a landfill. While the cracking towers and the reactors to make plastic are very large and very energy intense to break the oil apart, they have been able to make plastic of various kinds in great volumes. Nature does most of the work creating the oil and natural gas that refineries stick together for our use.
The prospect of being able to have a solar powered reactor to change the waste products back into usable material has been the secret sauce. The reactor in the English college is very small and the scientists have only proven that the idea works. They have used very pure CO2 from gas cylinders and very clean samples of PET plastic to find the right combination of catalysts that makes the good stuff we want. If their success on a very small scale in the lab will work with real life impure air and other kinds of plastics, they will have reconstructed what human manufacturing took apart from nature and gone a long way toward cleaning up pollution.
Recycled Humor
I have a joke about recycling,
But unfortunately, it’s already been used.
Recycling in the UK is getting very serious…
Even our immigrants are being shipped in reusable containers.
The frustrated father said, “I think I am wasting my advice on my son.” His buddy explained, “No you are not. In 20 years he will be using that same advice on his son.”
Have you heard the one about the recycling bin with a sign that said, “Empty water bottles here?” Pretty soon the bin was full of water.
What do you call a tire made out of 365 recycled condoms?
A Good year.
June 26th Birthdays
1994 – Ariana Grande, 1985 – Aubrey Plaza, 1986 – Nicole Arbour, 1992 – Jenette McCurdy
1974 – Derek Jeter, 1989 – King Back, 1998 – Jacob Elordi, 1980 – Michael Vick