Design World

  • Home
  • Technologies
    • 3D CAD
    • Electronics • electrical
    • Fastening & Joining
    • Factory automation
    • Linear Motion
    • Motion Control
    • Test & Measurement
    • Sensors
    • Fluid power
  • Learn
    • Ebooks / Tech Tips
    • Engineering Week
    • Future of Design Engineering
    • MC² Motion Control Classrooms
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • Webinars
  • LEAP AWARDS
  • Leadership
    • 2022 Voting
    • 2021 Winners
  • Design Guide Library
  • Resources
    • Subscribe!
    • 3D Cad Models
      • PARTsolutions
      • TraceParts
    • Digital Issues
      • Design World
      • EE World
    • Women in Engineering
  • Supplier Listings

‘Upcycling’ Plastic Bottles Could Give Them a More Useful Second Life

By Cell Press | February 28, 2019

Share

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a recycling process that transforms single-use beverage bottles, clothing, and carpet made from the common polyester material polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into more valuable products with a longer lifespan. Their research, published February 27 in the journal Joule, could help protect oceans from plastic waste by jumpstarting the recycled plastics market.

PET is strong but lightweight, resistant to water, and shatterproof—properties that make it extremely popular among manufacturers. Although PET is recyclable, most of the 26 million tons produced every year ends up in landfills or elsewhere in the environment, where it takes hundreds of years to biodegrade. But even when it is recycled, the process is far from perfect. Reclaimed PET has a lower value than the original and can only be repurposed once or twice.

“Standard PET recycling today is essentially ‘downcycling,'” says senior author Gregg Beckham, a Senior Research Fellow at NREL. “The process we came up with is a way to ‘upcycle’ PET into long-lifetime, high-value composite materials like those that would be used in car parts, wind turbine blades, surfboards, or snowboards.”

The team combined reclaimed PET with building blocks derived from renewable sources such as waste plant biomass. This resulted in a new material that combines reclaimed PET and sustainably sourced, bio-based molecules to produce two types of fiber-reinforced plastics (FRPs), which are 2-3 times more valuable than the original PET, meaning that future plastic bottles could live lucrative second lives. Through their collaboration with analysts at NREL, the team also predicts that the composite product would require 57 percent less energy to produce than reclaimed PET using the current recycling process and would emit 40 percent fewer greenhouse gases than standard petroleum-based FRPs—a significant improvement over business as usual.

Researchers Beckham and Nic Rorrer working on a process of upcycling: breaking down PET in existing waste and combining it with compounds derived from biomass to make something more valuable, such as fiber-reinforced composite materials. Credit: Dennis Schroeder / NREL

“The idea is to develop technologies that would incentivize the economics of PET reclamation,” says Beckham. “That’s the real hope—to develop ‘second-life’ upcycling technologies that make single-use waste plastic valuable to reclaim. This, in turn, could help keep waste plastic out of the world’s oceans and out of landfills.”

But there is still work to be done before this recycling process can be implemented beyond the laboratory bench. The team plans to further analyze the properties of the composite materials that result when PET is combined with the plant-based monomers and to test the process for scalability to determine how well it might fare in a manufacturing setting. They also hope to develop composites that can themselves be recycled; the current composites can last years and even decades but are not necessarily recyclable in the end. In addition, the NREL team plans to develop similar technologies for recycling other types of materials.

“The scale of PET production dwarfs that of composites manufacturing, so we need many more upcycling solutions to truly make a global impact on plastics reclamation through technologies like the one proposed in the current study,” says first author Nicholas Rorrer, an engineer at NREL who also participated in the study.


Filed Under: Product design

 

Related Articles Read More >

Read COMSOL News 2021
PCB mills
Basics of printed circuit board milling machines
scilab
The top ten free engineering math software packages
hardcore programming for mechanical engineers
Book Review: Hardcore Programming for Mechanical Engineers, By Angel Sola Orbaiceta

DESIGN GUIDE LIBRARY

“motion

Enews Sign Up

Motion Control Classroom

Design World Digital Edition

cover

Browse the most current issue of Design World and back issues in an easy to use high quality format. Clip, share and download with the leading design engineering magazine today.

EDABoard the Forum for Electronics

Top global problem solving EE forum covering Microcontrollers, DSP, Networking, Analog and Digital Design, RF, Power Electronics, PCB Routing and much more

EDABoard: Forum for electronics

Sponsored Content

  • Industrial disc pack couplings
  • Pushing performance: Adding functionality to terminal blocks
  • Get to Know Würth Industrial Division
  • Renishaw next-generation FORTiS™ enclosed linear encoders offer enhanced metrology and reliability for machine tools
  • WAGO’s smartDESIGNER Online Provides Seamless Progression for Projects
  • Epoxy Certified for UL 1203 Standard

Design World Podcasts

July 26, 2022
Tech Tuesdays: Sorbothane marks 40 years of shock and vibration innovation
See More >
Engineering Exchange

The Engineering Exchange is a global educational networking community for engineers.

Connect, share, and learn today »

Design World
  • Advertising
  • About us
  • Contact
  • Manage your Design World Subscription
  • Subscribe
  • Design World Digital Network
  • Engineering White Papers
  • LEAP AWARDS

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising | About Us

Search Design World

  • Home
  • Technologies
    • 3D CAD
    • Electronics • electrical
    • Fastening & Joining
    • Factory automation
    • Linear Motion
    • Motion Control
    • Test & Measurement
    • Sensors
    • Fluid power
  • Learn
    • Ebooks / Tech Tips
    • Engineering Week
    • Future of Design Engineering
    • MC² Motion Control Classrooms
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • Webinars
  • LEAP AWARDS
  • Leadership
    • 2022 Voting
    • 2021 Winners
  • Design Guide Library
  • Resources
    • Subscribe!
    • 3D Cad Models
      • PARTsolutions
      • TraceParts
    • Digital Issues
      • Design World
      • EE World
    • Women in Engineering
  • Supplier Listings