We've seen recycled bottles turned into car seats for Ford's 2012 Focus electric vehicle. And we've seen plans by Boeing to recycle composites used in its Dreamliner plane for nonstructural uses in aircraft. Now recycled bottles and other plastic products destined for landfills have been turned into structural, weight-bearing elements of a 90-foot heavy-load bridge in Scotland.
Recycled Structural Composite (RSC), a proprietary composite thermoplastic material from Axion International, is made from 100 percent recycled plastics. RSC is also 100 percent recyclable at the end of its useful life. The material won't rot, crumble, splinter, rust, or corrode, and it requires no painting or regular maintenance. In other words, it is a type of Trex building material, but instead of going into your back deck, it's designed for heavy-duty manufacturing uses such as railroad ties and heavy-load bridge elements like I-beams, pilings, and boards.
The crew lowers composite panels made from recycled plastics into place in the 90-foot Scottish bridge structure. Source: Axion International
Axion constructed the bridge's components at its plant in Pennsylvania and shipped them in six sections to Scotland, where the bridge spans the River Tweed at Easter Dawyck near Edinburgh. It was assembled and erected in four days (You can see a picture gallery here). Recycling the materials in the bridge prevented 50 tons of plastic waste from going into a landfill or being shipped to Asia, Anil Aggarwal, director of the Welsh firm Vertech Composites, one of Axion's partners in the project, said in a press release. The bridge, which is also the longest to date built with recycled plastic, meets European standards with a load rating of 45 metric tons.
The three-span bridge, which measures about 12 feet wide by 90 feet long, replaces an old road bridge made of steel beams and timber decking. It is the first recycled plastic bridge outside the US. Axion has built several US bridges from its RSC material, most recently in North Carolina.
Axion developed its RSC material in conjunction with Rutgers University's Materials Sciences and Engineering Department. Vertech plans to manufacture its own high-performance composite sheet materials, using Rutgers University's polymer blending and processing technology, for use in the European construction industry. These composite materials will serve as a replacement for the less environmentally friendly plywood, MDF, and laminates.
An efficient way of using those plastic bottles, thus great thought of waste management. Recycling plastic is the easiest way of making our earth cleaning and free from plastic landfilling. We at Replas encouraging for the same concept of plastic recycling as we manufacturing plastic recycled products like plastic profiles, plastic deck, bollards, furniture etc.
Actually, this material is being used for heavy-duty bridges built to take heavy traffic. The Fort Bragg bridge Chuck references was made for military vehicles, such as Army tanks, and the bridge I reported on, in Scotland, is built to take heavy equipment loads. The same material is used to build railroad bridges, including ties. Pretty amazing stuff. And it looks like the materials supplier, Axion, is increasing its production capability with at least one manufacturing facility:
Thanks for the info Charles. I'm amazed that they were able to get the specs to be that good, actually. Whilel this is not necessarily a material that you would want to use for long-term, high-weight traffic, it might be a great option for lower cost pedestrian bridges in a park, for example.
Chuck, thanks for sifting through the specs and making comparisons with steel. Sounds like, at least for now, this material competes with steel on the lower-end apps in terms of strength and length. But at least it's been done at all--it's a start!
Thanks for the link, Ann. From what I can tell in the Fort Bragg bridge, the Elastic Modulus was somewhere above 350 ksi, which would be very low compared to steel. Ultimate bending strength is 2,300 psi, which again would be much lower than steel. I think steel bridges are designed for 36,000 psi in bending. My guess is that this wouldn't give you the long unsupported spans that steel would but it's very impressive nonetheless and obviously has supported some high loads in short spans.
Great product, no doubt. But unfortunately the cost to bring the finished product up to comparitive strength is market prohibitive, hence the lack of sales (per company financials).
Thanks for the offer, but as a reporter I'd like to know for public use, for the readers. I do understand if you can't reveal proprietary information, and I'm sure our readers do, too.
Thanks for the fire-retardant info. What exactly is the "totally safe component in the material that retards fire"?
Regarding the 34:1 ROI, to be honest that's one of those phrases that tends to sound like PR or marketing, at least without enough contextual info for comparisons. ROI on exactly what? Compared to what? Those are the questions I usually ask a vendor. In any case, what readers have been wanting to know, and so have I, is the relative costs of this material vs the traditional ones, and that information doesn't seem to be available. Hence my guess that the material must be relatively inexpensive by now--or at least the comparative COO with steel must be relatively low, if the Army has been willing to pay for it.
Did you listen to the Army video I gave the link for? There is a 34:1 ROI on the bridges. There is a totally safe component in the material that retards fire. There are also coatings we have developed to render the material totally fireproof.
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