There are a couple of problems with recycling plastics. The biggest is that an overwhelmingly vast amount of it doesn't get recycled. It mostly doesn't matter that we separate it out into its own little bin, there are few actual plastic recycling centers. For the most part it still goes to the dump. Sometimes it may get separated into its different classes and baled and sold on for reuse, but that's actually pretty rare.
The other part is that it takes forever - almost literally - for plastics to break down in the environment. And I'm not even going to talk about microplastics in the environment - and in our bodies and in the bodies of pretty much every living creature! Plastic is pretty perfidious stuff. But hey! It made the petroleum industry billions of dollars, so it can't be all bad, can it?
Well. Scientists have developed a process in which PVC can be used to create
"chlorine-free fuel range hydrocarbons and [hydrochloric acid] in a single-stage process," the researchers said. Reported conversion efficiencies underscore the potential for real-world use. At 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), the process reached 95 percent conversion for soft PVC pipes and 99 percent for rigid PVC pipes and PVC wires."Now, PVC isn't the only plastic out there, but it's a beginning. And if you can reclaim the PVC cladding from wires, you're also now in a position to recycle the now-clean copper in the wire! Twofer!
Very interesting, especially since the process is at a - relatively-speaking - room temperature environment. Increasing the process temperature to 80c/176f, decidedly above room temperature, only increased the efficiency to 96%. Perhaps some discoveries can raise the efficiency or lower the temperature, but that temperature increase I think the energy cost is going to ruin the yield savings.
Obviously there are lots of philosophical, ethical, ecological, etc. issues to consider. If we can increase recycling, we decrease the amount of plastics in the environment, which could decrease the amount of microplastics therein - but are we already at or too far beyond that tipping point? We'd also be decreasing the need for the amount of oil being pumped out of the ground. We don't know the costs of this process, it sounds like it would be pretty expensive, but we also don't know the yield: gross pounds in for barrels out. And would an improvement in the production of petroleum/gasoline decrease demand for EVs, which are decidedly better for the environment?
Lots of things to consider, I'm sure a lot more than I've posited.
https://interestingengineering.com/science/us-china-turn-plastic-to-petrolhttps://science.slashdot.org/story/25/08/27/2258214/worlds-first-1-step-method-turns-plastic-into-fuel-at-95-efficiency![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
