A new European program could potentially improve the economics of plastics recycling by a significant margin. Called Novpol, the goal of the project is to create a new plastic with enhanced mechanical and processing properties from a mixed stream of five types of plastic waste. For example, a car interior could be recycled as a whole, rather than being separated into different streams. The EU-supported consortium hopes to create a plastic that can command at least 80 percent the price of a virgin plastic. Eight different contractors are working on the project. The coordinator is an Italian company called Filtri Clean Technica in Milan. Key focus is developing homogenizing equipment that can produce 500 kg/hr of material The goal is to boost European plastic recycling rates from the current rate of 16.5 percent.
Ford and Unifi, maker of Repreve, will gather and recycle 2 million plastic bottles at CES and other shows for conversion into the Repreve seat fabric used in the 2012 Focus EV.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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