Properly dispose of used plastics to promote recycling of plastic products

How to recycle recycled plastics

Plastic is a great invention of the 20th century. Its application field is expanding, which greatly facilitates people's lives and becomes a material closely related to human life. If there is no plastic, our life will become awkward and unimaginable.

1, the two sides of plastic

In 2016, the output of China's plastic products has exceeded 77 million tons, the output value is nearly 2 trillion, and it is increasing every year. Such a large market also carries the heroic dreams of countless people, and struggles for it. The legendary Li Ka-shing's Changjiang Industry used to start with plastic products. However, perfect things cannot exist, and God does not allow them. Similarly, plastics have been crowned as one of the worst inventions of the 20th century, as their serious pollution has gradually been discovered and paid more and more attention. What is worse is that the treatment of such pollution is beyond imagination.

Once, a generation of outstanding chemists have worked hard to achieve the excellent physical and chemical properties and durability of plastics, making plastics widely used in many fields due to its light weight, durability, aesthetics and low cost. Unexpectedly, it is precisely these excellent properties that make a lot of durable, non-corrosive plastic waste. A large number of plastic products discarded after use have become a major hazard to the environment.

2. Disposal of waste plastics

In the treatment of urban plastic solid waste, three methods of landfill, incineration and recycling are currently used. Due to different national conditions, countries vary. The United States is mainly landfill, and Europe and Japan are mainly based on incineration.

1. Landfill treatment, because the plastic products are generally light and not easy to rot, which will result in the landfill becoming a soft foundation and difficult to use in the future.

2. Incineration treatment, because the plastic generates a large amount of heat, it is easy to damage the furnace, and the gas generated after incineration will promote the warming of the earth. Some plastics will release harmful gases and pollute the atmosphere when incinerated.

3. Adopting the method of recycling and reuse, due to labor consumption, high recycling cost and lack of corresponding recycling channels, the world recycling and recycling only accounts for about 15% of all plastic consumption.

However, due to the limited world oil resources, from the perspective of saving the earth's resources, the recycling of plastics is of great significance. To this end, all countries in the world have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to develop various key technologies for the recycling of waste plastics, and are working to reduce the cost of recycling and recycling plastics.

3. Recycling method of waste plastics

At present, there are several methods for recycling used plastics:

1). Thermal energy recovery method

Most of the main components of plastics are hydrocarbons, which are combustible. For example, polystyrene burns more heat than dye oil. However, heat recovery is one of the last methods of recycling waste plastics. Because waste plastics burn, most of them produce toxic gases, which is also a threat to the environment. The burning of halogen-containing plastics will become the culprit in the production of dioxins.

2). Physical recycling

Physical recycling is a method actively promoted and promoted now. It is an effective means to turn waste into treasure and save energy and protect the environment. However, at present, it is mainly trapped in the recycling and sorting process, and the recycling revenue is small, and the sorting is difficult and the cost is high. People are still not very aware of environmental protection, and can't effectively classify garbage.

3). Chemical reduction method

This method cuts the long chain of the polymer and restores its original properties. The cracked material can be used to make new plastics. Some methods involve the chemical cracking of the combined carbon atoms by the addition of chemical elements, or the addition of energy to cause their thermal cracking. Some materials have been recycled by this method, but most of the materials are still in the experiment.

4). Hydrogenation method

In this way, mixed plastic articles can be processed, and 60%-80% of the components can be refined into synthetic crude oil according to different plastic components. In a joint research report, three chemical companies such as BASF in Germany pointed out that hydrogenation is the best way of pyrolysis, and the synthesized crude oil is good in quality and can be used for refining. This treatment treats halogen-containing waste plastics and does not produce toxic dioxins and chlorine.

With the continuous improvement of this technology, it may become one of the main methods to deal with waste plastics in the future.

4. Development direction of environmentally friendly plastics

While actively developing plastic recycling technology, it is also necessary to develop or recycle plastics in a direction that is conducive to processing or recycling.

1). Subtraction design

Research and development of materials suitable for recycling will not be focused on which plastics should be used to make individual parts, but rather consider materials that can be widely used. This is a revolutionary change in concept. In order to facilitate recycling, designers began to avoid the use of a variety of plastics in the design of products, the United States BMW is preparing to reduce the number of plastics in its new car design by 40%, in order to facilitate the recycling of waste plastics.

The world's electrical and electronic market has drawn attention to the recycling of waste plastics. International Business Machines (IBM) has begun to label plastic parts for computer and business machines, and is developing reusable plastic electronic components and simplified disassembly equipment. The structure of the product is also considered to eliminate the surface coloration of the components, and the amount of external binder used to control the plastic additives is reduced by the use of recycled process parts and additional parts.

2). Biodegradation

Research and development of biodegradation has become a research hotspot in the plastics processing industry in the world. Researchers hope to develop a plastic that can degrade in a microbial environment to handle large amounts of disposable plastics, especially mulch and multi-package waste, on farmland, forests, and oceans.

The research goal is to develop a plastic that can guarantee the performance of its name during use, and once it is used up, it can be decomposed by microorganisms in the environment to completely enter the ecological cycle. At the same time, the production cost of this plastic is relatively low and economical. If it is such a biodegradable plastic, it can be composted with ordinary bio-waste after use without having to be collected, sorted and regenerated at a great cost. Moreover, the decomposition products enter the ecological cycle without causing waste of resources.

In the research and development of biodegradable plastics, countries all over the world have invested a lot of money and manpower and spent a lot of energy on research. The plastics processing industry generally believes that biodegradable plastics are a new technological issue in the 21st century.

5. The rise of the waste plastic recycling industry

With the closing of the 19th National Congress, ecological civilization construction and ecological environmental protection have been the key tasks to be deployed. The green economy will have unprecedented opportunities for development in the coming years. As the amount of waste plastic continues to grow, the waste plastics recycling industry will become an important chapter in the green economy. The national government has already begun to lay out the layout, such as the classification of domestic waste, recycling site layout and other formalization of the recycling system has been introduced and implemented. At this revolutionary turn of global waste plastics, our waste plastics need to seize the opportunity to deploy the future. I believe that many heroes of waste plastics will have a dream in this transition, and the waste plastic recycling industry will surely rise!