Your rambling\ranting and your comments do not seem to have much to do with the subject at hand other than your strong desire to stand on a soapbox and give everyone else your political views. DNC
Ann, I am not aware of anyone using this method. It just popped into my head that since both heat and ultraviolet attack the bonds in polymers, that a combination should be even more effective. OThers are certainly welcome to use the concept as long as I get credit for coming up with it. It will be a nice addition to my resume, and it may be of some benefit to humanity as well.
William, thanks for clarifying your statement. I haven't heard of this technology in any of the background information or the studies. What is it called? Can you give us some links?
Ann, No, the idea that I had was using solar energy, both light and heat at the same time, to break the large molecules up. Essentially a solar furnace with ultraviolet as well..
Leaving the plastic out in the sun does break it down, but it would be a very long time for anything useful to be created.
So the big deal is putting in the right amount of energy, to cause just enough decomposition. The process would indeed be a form of pyrolysis, but with the UV as well, it would be more effective, I think.
I wasn't thinking in terms of burning during pyrolysis itself but the burning of the fuel created by these recovery processes. This would bother many environmental groups, I believe.
I can see where confusion could result. Did I understand you right this time?
While the smallest Blest units may be "too large" for home use their capacity is about right for use by small groups of people in a neighborhood, or a strip mall of stores, as Jerry suggests and as is currently done in Japan. When the company finishes developing the solar-powered version for use on TOP's boats, that one might be small enough for home use.
William, if you mean just letting plastic sit out in the sun without further treatment, the problems with that method of decomposition are: a) it takes way too long, and b) while it's taking way too long to decompose, particles get into the ecosystem and consumed by fish and birds, and poison water and soil. This is well-known by everyone involved in various forms of WTE and PTE. Or did you mean something else?
How about using the sun's energy directly to break apart the plastic molecules so that they can be reassembled into fuel. The benefit of directly driven solar decomposition is that it would not affect the power grid at all, and it would have fewer conversion losses. Just add enough energy to push the plastics back to the original petroleum stock, or something like that. After all, ultraviolet does break plastics bonds when we don't want it to, why not utilize that process when it could be useful.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
The 100-percent solar-powered Solar Impulse plane flies on a piloted, cross-country flight this summer over the US as a prelude to the longer, round-the-world flight by its successor aircraft planned for 2015.
GE Aviation expects to chop off about 25 percent of the total 3D printing time of metallic production components for its LEAP Turbofan engine, using in-process inspection. That's pretty amazing, considering how slow additive manufacturing (AM) build times usually are.
A $1,500, hand-operated, bench-model, plastic injection machine crowdsource-funded via Kickstarter can be used to mold small, quality, plastic parts inexpensively, on demand.
The federal government is launching competitions to kickstart three more manufacturing innovation institutes, including one focused on Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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