Is it upcycling?

[Mary Lou Van Deventer]

All - 

Today I ran into a curious research article from a Nature newsletter that says plastics from end-of-life vehicles can be upcycled - all together, without being sorted - into something called graphene, which can then be used as a manufacturing input.  If anybody is interested in this set of ideas and has the chemistry chops to apply the information, good on ya.  Looks to me - a confessed non-chemist - a little like some flavor of incineration.  Here’s the url and the summary.  

Aunty Entropy  

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-022-00006-7?sap-outbound-id=4D9130FA5B557F2DC2318DCAEBB14339C2D71062&utm_source=hybris-campaign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=111_AWR7590_0000022207_APSR_44172_AWA1_GL_PHSS_APSCI_OAX-Conlau&utm_content=EN_internal_41568_20220527&mkt-key=42010A0557EB1EEBB48ED6C2E38BD1A9  

Upcycling end-of-life vehicle waste plastic into flash graphene

Kevin M. Wyss1, Robert D. De Kleine 2, Rachel L. Couvreur2, Alper Kiziltas2, Deborah F. Mielewski2 & James M. Tour 1,3 ✉

Responsible disposal of vehicles at the end of life is a pressing environmental concern. In particular, waste plastic forms the largest proportion of non-recycled waste material from light-duty vehicles, and often ends up in a landfill. Here we report the upcycling of depolluted, dismantled and shredded end-of-life waste plastic into flash graphene using flash Joule heating. The synthetic process requires no separation or sorting of plastics and uses no solvents or water. We demonstrate the practical value of the graphene as a re-inforcing agent in automotive polyurethane foam composite, where its introduction leads to improved tensile strength and low frequency noise absorption properties. We demonstrate process continuity by upcycling the resulting foam composite back into equal-quality flash graphene. A pro- spective cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment suggests that our method may afford lower cumulative energy demand and water use, and a decrease in global warming potential compared to traditional graphene synthesis methods.   

[Chris]

Upcycling involves no chemical transformations. An aluminum can is shaped into a child’s toy. A wine bottle is cut and formed into a drinking glass. That’s upcycling. No.  Burning plastic not upcycling. No it’s not even recycling. It’s burning. Because pure carbon and its concomitant hazardous waste are the results of a burning process.

 

 

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