Plastic recycling gains momentum

塑料材料因聚合体构成较为复杂，故在实现循 环利用时需特殊的技术与设备，同时，添加剂及染色剂的使用也对其再利用带来挑战，代价也相对高昂。本文将通过JBI公司的产品Plastic2Oil (P2O)，即通过结合一种可再度使用的化学催化剂制程将塑 料转化成油的技术，为您介绍塑料循环利用领域的最新进展。 Enviromental concerns created urgent demand for measures to ensure ecological balance and sustainability. Recycling, or the process of recovering scraps and reprocessing them into new useful products, has thus become an important issue that has tremendous impact on the manufacturer. In the plastics industry today, the ban on plastic bags and urgent need to properly discard plastic products such as PET bottles, are trends that have affected the directions of the industry. Recycling plastic materials requires special techniques and equipment due to the complex composition of polymers. Also, the use of additives and dyes has made it challenging, and expensive to recycle plastics. Sorting system for various plastic types The Society of Plastics Industry has developed the Plastic Identification Code (PIC) which serves as the basis for sorting plastics prior to recycling. In some countries, manufacturers of plastic products are required to use PIC labels on their products. Plastic materials are usually separated by colour and then shredded after which these undergo processes to remove impurities. The material is then melted and pelletised for processing into other products. The easiest plastics to recycle are those made of PETE which are assigned the number 1. Once processed, these can be turned into soft drink, water and salad dressing bottles; peanut butter and jam jars, among others. Table 1 shows the PIC and the applications of recycled plastic materials. There are now a growing number of recycling processes--among them monomer recycling method thermal depolymerisation, heat compression--which are able to solve some of the challenges in reprocessing. Also, a number of companies and organisations have taken recycling a step further with new solutions that are expected to cost-efficiently transform waste into useful products. Recent developments in recycling One interesting recycling solution is the process developed by US-based JBI, Inc. JBI's President/CEO, John Bordynuik, has been in the business of recovering planetary and sensor data from old magnetic media for various government and institutional archives for more than 20 years, amassing the world's largest solution and algorithm archive. JBI, Inc. released the results of tests conducted by IsleChem, a New York-based, state-certified laboratory, in validating JBI's Plastic2Oil (P2O) process. Since December 2009, IsleChem has conducted extensive chemical, analytical and process engineering testing for JBI's P2O technology on a diversified range of plastic feedstocks. A wide variety of plastics were tested and all produced residue of only about 1%, which is allowed in landfills. Islechem has performed more than 40 small scale runs of various multicoloured, mixed plastic feedstocks through the process. After analysing theMiesten keng?t laajasta valikoimasta