Plastic Recycling
Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastics
and reprocessing the material into useful products, sometimes completely
different from their original state. For instance, this could mean melting
down soft drink bottles then casting them as plastic chairs and tables.
Polymer recycling, recycling polymers, polymer recyclers.
A&D Recycling
Plastic material recycling business buying and selling scrap plastic, accommodating our customers with regrind material and a pelletizing service. Other services offered by A& D Recycling is putting staff on site to manage the removal of un-used plastic and ensure that the place is kept clean and tidy. A & D Recycling purchase all plastic scrap off cuts, plastic bottles, plastic road barriers etc for plastic recycling.
Plastic Recycling
Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastics and
reprocessing the material into useful products. For instance, this could
mean melting down polyester soft drink bottles then spinning the polymer
into fibres.Before recycling, plastics are sorted according to their resin
identification code. PET, for instance, has a resin code of 1.
Obstacles
When compared to glass or metallic materials, plastic poses some unique
challenges from a recycling perspective. Chief among them is their low entropy
of mixing, which is due to the high molecular weight of large polymer chains.
Another way of stating this problem is that, since a macromolecule interacts
with its environment along its entire length, its enthalpy of mixing is
very, very large compared to that of a small organic molecule with a similar
structure; thermal excitations are often not enough to drive such a huge
molecule into solution on their own. Due to this uncommon influence of mixing
enthalpy, polymers must often be of nearly identical composition in order
to mix with one another. To take representative samples from beverage containers,
the many aluminium-based alloys all melt into the same liquid phase, but
the various copolymer blends of PET from different manufacturers do not
dissolve into one another when heated. Instead, they tend to phase-separate,
like oil and water. Phase boundaries weaken an item made from such a mixture
considerably, meaning that most polymer blends are only useful in a few,
very limited contexts.
Another barrier to recycling is the widespread use of dyes, fillers, and
other additives in plastics. The polymer is generally too viscous to economically
remove fillers, and would be damaged by many of the processes that could
cheaply remove the added dyes. Additives are less widely used in beverage
containers and plastic bags, allowing them to be recycled more frequently.
The use of biodegradable plastics is increasing. If some of these get mixed
in the other plastics for recycling, the recycled plastic is less valuable.
Alternative processes
Many such problems can be solved by using a more elaborate monomer recycling
process, in which a condensation polymer essentially undergoes the inverse
of the polymerization reaction used to manufacture it. This yields the same
mix of chemicals that formed the original polymer, which can be purified
and used to synthesize new polymer chains of the same type. Du Pont opened
a pilot plant of this type in Cape Fear to recycle PET by a process of methanolysis,
but closed the plant due to economic pressures.
Another potential option is the conversion of assorted polymers into petroleum by a much less precise thermal depolymerization process. Such a process would be able to accept almost any polymer or mix of polymers, including thermoset materials such as vulcanized rubber tires and the biopolymers in feathers and other agricultural waste. Like natural petroleum, the chemicals produced can be made into fuels as well as polymers. A pilot plant of this type exists in Carthage, Missouri, using turkey waste as a feedstock. See the main article on thermal depolymerization. Gasification is a similar process, but is not technically recycling since polymers are not likely to become the result.
Recently, a process has also been developed in which many kinds of plastic can be used as a carbon source in the recycling of scrap steel.
Yet another process that is gaining ground with startup
companies (especially in Australia, United States and Japan) is Heat Compression.
The heat compression process takes all unsorted, cleaned plastic in all
forms, from soft plastic bags to hard industrial waste, and mixes the
load in tumblers (large rotating drums resembling giant clothes dryers).
The process generates heat from the friction of the plastic materials
rubbing against each other inside the drum, eventually melting all, or
most of the material. The materials are then pumped out of the drum through
heated pipes into casting moulds. The most obvious benefit to this method
is the fact that all plastic is recyclable, not just matching forms. But
criticism rises from the energy costs of rotating the drums, and heating
the post-melt pipes.
Applications
The most-often recycled plastic, HDPE or number 2, is recycled into plastic
lumber, tables, benches, truck cargo liners, trash receptacles, stationery
(e.g rulers) and other durable plastic products and is usually in demand.
The white plastic "peanuts" used as packing material are often
accepted by shipping stores for reuse.
In Israel successful trials have shown that plastic films recovered from mixed municipal waste streams can be recycled into useful products.
Similarly, agricultural plastics such as mulch film, drip tape and silage bags are being diverted from the waste stream and successfully recycled into bulk resin commodities in Labelle, FL. Historically, these agricultural plastics have primarily been either landfilled or burned on-site in the fields of individual farms.
The environmental benefits of recycling plastic are that
it produces less sulphur dioxide, less waste and less carbon dioxide.
All information above reproduced from Wikipedia®
