What is mechanical recycling?
Mechanical recycling refers to operations that aim to recover plastics waste via mechanical processes (i.e. grinding, washing, separating, drying, re-granulating and compounding).
What is the difference between mechanical and chemical recycling?
Chemical recycling splits polymer chains and supplies products such as crude oil, naphtha, or fuels. Mechanical recycling preserves the molecular structure. It mechanically crushes the plastic and remelts it into granulate. This granulate is then used to make new plastic products.
How is feedstock recycling done?
Feedstock recycling, also known as “chemical recycling,” is the process of breaking down collected plastics into monomers and other basic chemical elements (“depolymerization”). … These monomers can be used as virgin material alternatives in manufacturing new polymers.
What is the difference between feedstock and raw materials?
Raw material can encompass the entirety of what goes into making a product. For instance, fabric, thread, dye, and buttons, are all raw material for making a shirt. Feedstock is usually a single, uniform, raw material that is given as an input into a machine or process, usually in large quantities.
What is feedstock used for?
Feedstock is raw material used for processing or manufacturing another product. Examples of feedstock include crude oil, which is used to produce gasoline, corn, which is used to produce ethanol, and soybean oil, which is used to produce biodiesel.
What are the advantages of mechanical recycling?
Firstly, fewer new (fossil) raw materials are needed. In addition, it offers a solution for the large amounts of waste. Recycling waste streams also produces less CO2 emissions than producing new raw materials.
What are the pros of mechanical recycling?
Mechanical recycling is less energy intensive than chemical recycling. Chemical recycling needs more energy and produces more CO2 emissions. Mechanical recycling shreds plastic waste and doesn’t’ use toxic chemicals.
Why is chemical recycling better?
Chemical recycling helps us overcome the limits of traditional recycling. It also helps manufacturers continue to push the boundaries of how, and where, recycled plastics can be used.
How does mechanical recycling of plastic work?
In mechanical recycling, plastic waste (sorted by material type) is milled and washed, passes a flotation separation, and is dried. The plastic flakes are then either used directly to produce new plastic materials or they are processed into granulates beforehand.
What is an advantage of feedstock recycling?
Feedstock recycling of scrap polymers by thermal and chemical degradation is well known and environmentally accepted. Figure 1 shows that it enables one to recover raw materials (and primary energy) from waste and applied processes that are identical or similar to those of energy carriers production.
What feedstock means?
A feedstock is defined as any renewable, biological material that can be used directly as a fuel, or converted to another form of fuel or energy product.
What are the two categories of polymers?
Polymers fall into two categories:
- thermosetting plastic or thermoset.
- thermoforming plastic or thermoplastic.