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Science Technology

New Plastic to Cut CO2 Emissions and Purify Water 120

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the green-plastic dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers have lots of imagination. After developing plastic as solid as steel, other scientists from in Australia, Korea and in the U.S. have created a plastic which could cut CO2 emissions and purify water. Their new material mimics pores found in plants and is exceptionally efficient. As said one of the lead researchers, 'it can separate carbon dioxide from natural gas a few hundred times faster than current plastic membranes and its performance is four times better in terms of purity of the separated gas.' Now it remains to be seen if commercial companies are interested, either for water desalination or for natural gas processing plants."
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New Plastic to Cut CO2 Emissions and Purify Water More

New Plastic to Cut CO2 Emissions and Purify Water

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  • Esculation of promises (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @06:00PM (#20988469)
    "could cut" becomes "to cut". Probably previously in the chain there's a "might cut". No wonder we get so many hyped technologies that never deliver.

    • Re:Esculation of promises (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @06:03PM (#20988513) Homepage Journal
      Just wait. This is Slashdot, where there's at least a vague hope of somebody understanding a bit of science. By the time this hits the regular papers it will be "cuts".
      • The material works. The only question is, Will it be cost-feasible to employ this plastic? In future as carbon trading opens up and becomes a market reality in more places, the answer will probably be yes.
        Also, to be filed under Something gained in translation:
        "analysed the material, which was initially engineered by Ho Bum Park"
        Or maybe file it under 3rd grade humour.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tjstork ( 137384 )
          Will it be cost-feasible to employ this plastic? In future as carbon trading opens up and becomes a market reality in more places, the answer will probably be yes

          so, in other words, its not cost feasible now, but, we can raise taxes on CO2 emissions to make it that way.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by rtb61 ( 674572 )
            It would be more accurate to say that they can make the material in highly complex limited run laboratory setting but they have not yet gone onto developing mass production techniques for creating the plastic film on a large scale.

            The current Australian government has shifted CSIRO's focus from working in the interest of all Australian citizens to working in the intrests of corporate profits. Where as before they would immediately have gone on to develop mass production techniques due to the obvious benef

      • No need for /. to overhype. Leave that to USA Today.

        • Hey, people, so far, in reading the comment sections, I have yet to see a single anti-MS rant. Can we get it together and start bashing MS?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ArAgost ( 853804 )

        By the time this hits the regular papers it will be "cuts".
        So, uhm, are we reading news on the BLEEDING edge?
    • I believe the "might" part was put in originally because um...what do you do with the CO2 trapped on the other side of the membrane? ooh didn't think of that one, did they? lol. Well at least it filters water.
      • There is all kinds of commercial uses for CO2, just capturing the CO2 from the waste stream of a power plant and using it is better than burning natural gas to kilning limestone just to generate CO2. Even at that there are about four or five ways off the top of my head that will sequester CO2,
        1. you can just dump it into the deep cold ocean where it will just sit on the bottom in a puddle
        2. you can pump it into empty oil or gas fields
        3. you can pump it into oil fields to push out more oil
        4. you can feed it

    • Re (Score:1)

      by Hells ( 1166547 )
      "New Plastic to Cut CO2 Emissions and Purify Water" The question is... can it cook as well?
    • Gosh, and after that, maybe "esculation" will become "escalation". No promises, though.
    • I agree the press release is misleading, however this method seems to provide a cheaper/faster way to separate gases, which is potentially beneficial for many industrial or laboratory processes. For the real details check the abstract in Science or the full article if available. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5848/254 [sciencemag.org]

    • Editorial Sensationalism (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sentri ( 910293 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @10:00PM (#20990385) Homepage
      Now now, the CSIRO are actually a respectable scientific body that research and develop countless products, dont believe me? Have a look at 802.11n (for example)

      From the Article:
      "This plastic will help solve problems of small molecule separation, whether related to clean coal technology, separating greenhouse gases, increasing the energy efficiency of water purification, or producing and delivering energy from hydrogen," Dr Anita Hill of CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering said.
      "The ability of the new plastic to separate small molecules surpasses the limits of any conventional plastics."
      "It can separate carbon dioxide from natural gas a few hundred times faster than current plastic membranes and its performance is four times better in terms of purity of the separated gas."

      All wishy washyness about the abilities of the substance is the editorialising of slashdot and the writer of the article

      (802.11n link with a fairly complete look at the picture: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070924-dark-australian-patent-cloud-looms-over-802-11n-spec.html [arstechnica.com] though it does kind of skirt around the fact that the CSIRO were ripped off in the past by the worldwide adoption clause and they are attempting to avoid the same again )
      • All wishy washyness about the abilities of the substance is the editorialising of slashdot and the writer of the article

        Well, if we had a really good filter...

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by instarx ( 615765 )
        And please note that the membrane seperates CO2 from natural gas. Big deal. It isn't CO2 contamination in NG that's the problem, its the CO2 that's produced when the natural gas is burned. Now, does it take CO2 out of *exhaust* gases efficiently? If so it could be useful, but this smells of hype to me.
        • The significant statements about this new plastic are as follows:
          • it separates small molecules from larger ones very quickly
          • at a higher purity level than current membranes,
          • and it does so at a higher temperature.

          What this presumably means is that a properly used filter could be used to clean up combustion related gases, etc., returning the unburned hydrocarbons to a burner perhaps, and allowing the the remaining C02 and water molecules to be further processed later on.The next step in the line is the one

        • We demonstrated free-volume structures in dense vitreous polymers that enable outstanding molecular and ionic transport and separation performance that surpasses the limits of conventional polymers. The unusual microstructure in these materials can be systematically tailored by thermally driven segment rearrangement. Free-volume topologies can be tailored by controlling the degree of rearrangement, flexibility of the original chain, and judicious inclusion of small templating molecules. This rational tailor

  • We'll just sit here in the pumpkin patch, and you can see the Great Pumpkin with your OWN EYES.
    • offtopic or not, Charlie Brown should NEVER be modded down!

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by damn_registrars ( 1103043 )

        offtopic or not, Charlie Brown should NEVER be modded down!

        That's just too far off topic for me to agree with you this time.

        Though I will also say

        In soviet Russia, Charlie Brown down moderates YOU

  • Artificial Kidney? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can any medical types address the application of this material to artificial kidneys?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Abeydoun ( 1096003 )
      IICAMS (I am currently a medical student) Unless it has some other interesting characteristic not mentioned, the only potential use I see in dialysis/an artificial kidney would be to increase serum pH. But in someone with renal problems and is likely to be fairly physically inactive, the lungs already do a fairly decent job at regulating high pH by C02 removal. Nonetheless, the lungs' ability to regulate pH is more of a redundancy/tweaking technique to make the system more robust and as such they don't do

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Renraku ( 518261 )
      The major problem with creating artificial organs is one of flexibility.

      Your kidneys, for example, do much more than just filter blood. They keep the pH livable, help control blood volume and consistency, secrete a few hormones, and help maintain blood pressure.

      This material could be reworked to possibly improve the function of dialysis machines, however, if its not just right or flexible enough to become just right, even that will be far fetched..

      Nothing in your body has just one purpose.
  • "Plastics, son, plastics."

  • But does it run Linux? Or make toast?
  • "Nah", say industry groups.

    "We've got enough money." They elaborate.

    Honestly though - if this works out, these inherently filtering plastics would become the new... well, plastics sub-industry. Assuming the filters don't break down too rapidly, and wouldn't be inherently too limited in terms of materials/temperatures they can sort with, the variety of functions they could perform would mimic what we see in life all around us.

    In addition the potential use in farming and the sciences would produce a direct
    • There is nothing 'new' about this. There are commercial plastics used to desalinize water (reverse osmosis) and membranes used to concentrate oxygen in the gaseous state.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by RyanFenton ( 230700 )
        If you're implying I lack complete understanding here - you're right. But all that I've seen of filtering plastics have been macroscopic plastic forms that either hold a solution in a shape that maximizes some process (evaporation, condensation), or are otherwise just the container for the real filtering process. The single-piece plastic with inherent filtering properties like a cell wall is what seems new to me.

        Ryan Fenton

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by tcolberg ( 998885 )

          The hope is that the may be the or one of the few steps necessary to making water desalination reasonable on a massive level. For example, the Western States of the US are in constant bickering over limited water rights. This and similar technologies may bring water desalination costs down to a point where such worries about fresh water are unnecessary.

          I know a lot of people love to point to conservation, but cities like Los Angeles are already conserving a lot of water. Urban areas in California only

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by deek ( 22697 )

            This and similar technologies may bring water desalination costs down to a point where such worries about fresh water are unnecessary.

            There _are_ other issues with desalination, other than cost. Like, what do you do with the salty brine by-product? Tip it back into the ocean? That could cause environmental problems.

            Still, on a small scale, a cheap and efficient desalination product would be brilliant! I'd certainly buy a handheld version, when I go camping near the ocean.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by SEE ( 7681 )
              It's like sulfur. If you were to commercially mine coal just for the sulfur, you'd lose money competing with other sulfur sources. But scrubbing sulfur from coal smoke to comply with environmental rules extracts the sulfur anyway. The result has been a total collapse of the commercial sulfur-mining industry as power plants try to sell off the huge stockpiles of sulfur they're amassing.

              Similarly, high-concentration brine is an excellent source of salt. Other sources of salt are currently economically com

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Eivind ( 15695 )
              Why would that cause problems, other than extremely locally ? You're not changing the total amount of salt in the sea, nor the total amount of water in the sea, so the end-result should be pretty close to zero. Keep in mind that the water isn't permanently removed from the sea, it returns to the sea in short order. If it *is* a problem locally, which also seems pretty unlikely except in extremely closed, small, sea-arms, the obvious solution is simply more mixing.

              • Re:'Nah', say industry groups. (Score:4, Informative)

                by deek ( 22697 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @09:37PM (#21004721) Homepage Journal

                Why would that cause problems, other than extremely locally ? You're not changing the total amount of salt in the sea, nor the total amount of water in the sea, so the end-result should be pretty close to zero.


                Well, you _are_ changing the total amount of water in the sea, otherwise what is the use of desalination? But that is a nit-pick, because you are correct, if you consider the _entire_ sea, the net effect will be close to zero.

                But I'm not talking about net effect. Concentrated brine will kill life on the seabed, and it will kill it for many kilometres around the pipes, depending on the topography, of course. It sounds like you don't understand how concentrated brine acts in seawater. If you think it'll naturally disperse quickly, you've got a big surprise waiting. If unagitated, brine will sink to the bottom of the sea, and will hang around for a long, long time. You'll actually have a lake of brine form, and it is visibly different to the normal seawater above it. All this can quite quickly disrupt or kill off the ecosystem in a much larger area than the brine itself takes up.

                The net salt content of the whole sea will be close to the same as before, but now you've destroyed any life in the area. Now you know the dangers of thinking in terms of "net effect".
      • My understanding is the real break through is more along the lines of more consistent pore size, and the hourglass shape to the pores increasing flow rates.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BiggerIsBetter ( 682164 )
      There is a catch, of course: Plastics are often derived from oil.
      • There is a catch, of course: Plastics are often derived from oil.

        Certainly - but when you can better filter the Canadian oil shale...

        Ryan Fenton

      • There is a catch, of course: Plastics are often derived from oil.
        But we can create oil with those -- shit, I forget the name of them, you put turkey offal in one end and get hydrocarbons out the other. The point is, we can do that with people, to. I say we start with the Texas oil men.

  • Essentially a plastic version of a plant membrane (Score:5, Informative)

    by bomanbot ( 980297 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @06:11PM (#20988571)
    Well I read TFA and the concept behind that plastic is deceptively simple: It is a membrane consisting of hourglass-shaped pores, which seemingly is a very efficient shape for pores and is also used in plant cell membranes.

    So in essence, this plastic is a plant membrane in plastic form, which is not a radically advanced concept, but a really clever one and if it works as advertised, kudos to the research teams.
    • In my opinion the press release distorted somewhow the facts in an attempt to make it more understandable. According to the article in science they actually don't know for sure what the shape of the material. Based on absorption experiments they assume the pore structure is similar to that of activated carbon or zeolites, instead of the pore structure of usual polymer membranes.

  • Net reduction -vs- Net produced (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would be curious if this is a net reduction of CO2 considering the processes of getting oil from oil sands in the ground to final molded plastic CO2 trap. It takes a lot of CO2 to get that oil out of the ground, process it into resin for plastic manufactoring then make the final molded CO2 trap. 4 + 4 - 2 != 0 CO2 Seems like marketing has jumped on the CO2 product marketing band wagon.
    • This is the kind of question that always needs to be asked, whenever a technology promises to do something 'cleaner'. Oftentimes the new technology is more expensive, requires more processing, more raw materials, and sometimes more dangerous materials.

  • What I want to know is ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DivineGod ( 1160361 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @06:17PM (#20988621)
    ... will the CO2 emission from producing the plastic be worth the amount saved by using it?

  • Copying Nature (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lloy0076 ( 624338 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @06:23PM (#20988673) Homepage

    Well, those who innovate turn once again to Parental Nature for inspiration; not entirely surprising seeing Parental Nature either has:

    • Millions of years of evolution to get it right; or
    • A supremely Intelligent Designer

    I just hope enough of Parental Nature is around the place for long enough before we lose the wealth of knowledge and technology which we can copy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jamesh ( 87723 )
      Yes, but one day that intelligent designer is going to come down from the heavens, and instead of another 40 day and 40 night flood there is going to be a huge patent lawsuit on all the things we've copied from nature. No amount of rainbows is going to fix that mess!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dpilot ( 134227 )
        Quick, file a business process patent on "Evolution by natural selection as a mechanism for Intelligent Design." Recent patent reform in the US changes things from first-to-invent to first-to-file. Since the above business process is critical to all the mechanisms of nature that we're copying, we can cut off any infringement suits by the Intelligent Designer at the knees with this one.
    • In the words of George Carlin: "The planet is fine, the PEOPLE are f**cked" Parental Nature will be around for a long time. If it needs to get rid of us, whether by frying us in our own byproducts, or by whatever other means, it will. Nature always wins; it's the nature of nature.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @06:29PM (#20988735)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Lead scientists? (Score:3, Funny)

    by youthoftoday ( 975074 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @06:31PM (#20988761) Homepage Journal
    Surely that's a highly toxic metal (at least its compounds are)? Does that cancel out the good this will do?

  • purify things other than water (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @06:48PM (#20988929) Homepage Journal
    I would like to see a plastic that can purify ethanol, instead of using the extremely inefficient method of boiling to distill the ethanol. All that boiling is one of the big reasons ethanol is impractical in the US. (we don't have the climate for sugarcane)
    • Huh? Even if we did have the climate for sugarcane - we'd still need to distill the result to purify it.
      • Yes but you get a lot more ethanol out of sugarcane than you do corn, so you can actually get more energy out of sugarcane than you put in it. basically you are actually benefiting from the sunlight the plants collected, but currently with corn you put in as much if not more energy trying to convert it. If you are operating your farms mainly near coal power plants you are just going through a round about way of converting coal into ethanol. (should just use coal gas then, it's cheaper)

        I assumed all slashdot

        • Yes but you get a lot more ethanol out of sugarcane than you do corn, so you can actually get more energy out of sugarcane than you put in it. basically you are actually benefiting from the sunlight the plants collected, but currently with corn you put in as much if not more energy trying to convert it. If you are operating your farms mainly near coal power plants you are just going through a round about way of converting coal into ethanol. (should just use coal gas then, it's cheaper)

          You have no clue what

          • Well Mr. Derek Lyons, until you provide even the slightest explanation for your attacks on his statements, it looks like *you* are the one spouting bullshit here.

            In other words - it's not very interesting when you just say to someone "you are wrong." It's much more interesting when you give *reasons* for disagreeing.

            Try to be a little more interesting, ok?
            • One doesn't debate pseudoscientific nonsense - one merely notes its existence and moves on. (And when one has the wit to take the rational part in such a debate, once can differentiate between so noting and attacks.)
          • More distillation steps == more energy.

            Higher sugar content == less processing to convert starches into sugars. Also sugar cane has much higher carbohydrate yield per unit area than corn does.

            This is stuff we already know, and is proven in numerous publications written on the subject. In addition it is easily confirmed independently.

            Where do farms get the energy to boil their fermented corn to distill the ethanol? Solar, wind, hydro, nuclear. That would be ideal, but the most cynical of us think burning coa

            • More distillation steps == more energy.

              Difference needed in distillation steps between sugarcane and corn == zero.

              Higher sugar content == less processing to convert starches into sugars.

              Very little processing is required to convert starches into sugars - one merely malts, or uses enzymatic processes directly.

              This is stuff we already know, and is proven in numerous publications written on the subject. In addition it is easily confirmed independently.

              In addition it is handwa

              • no, you're wrong.

              • "Difference needed in distillation steps between sugarcane and corn == zero."

                Sugarcane ethanol is distillated 3 times. But I don't know how many times corn ethanol is distillated. Anyway, the distillation of a solution with a bigger concentration of ethanol uses less energy than one with bigger concentration of water.

                "Very little processing is required to convert starches into sugars - one merely malts, or uses enzymatic processes directly."

                Moiling sugarcane is easier tough. But that isn't probalty t

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by mkcheme ( 824521 )
                The energy cost to biomass --> ethanol is not in the distillation, it's in the enzymatic digestion of the biomass into fermentable sugars. Current processes require large amounts of enzymes made in a separate process. According to a recent talk at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, the smart money is in pairing the enzymatic digestion with microorganisms that exoress the enzymes. This compresses two steps into one ("process intensification") and as a side benefit, the enzym
      • The big advantage you get with sugarcane is that the remaining cane material, bagasse [wikipedia.org], can be burned to provide heat for the distillation process. Beets have a comparable yield to cane in terms of amount of sugar per acre, but require an external energy source to distill the ethanol, so the overall energy yield is much lower.

        A membrane separation method would be a big boon here.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by technococcus ( 990913 )
      The other big reason ethanol is impractical everywhere is that its lower heating value is less than half that of gasoline. Translation: You have to burn at least twice as much (by weight; more than that by volume) to get the same energy output. Considering the carbon content of a kg of ethanol vs. that of a kg of gasoline, there's absolutely no reason to support such a terrible stopgap. Get on board with gas-electric hybrids, all-electrics, small light diesels (efficiency, go!), and fast-breeder nuclear
    • If the water molecule is smaller than the ethanol then you should be able to separate it, but my guess is that the pump to pressurize the solution to push out the water would be significant.
  • "exceptionally efficient"

    If that is right then we are facing the possibility of solid-rock-ice-earth.

  • Then What? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by headhot ( 137860 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @07:32PM (#20989267) Homepage
    What happens to the plastic membrane after it absorbs the CO2? Does it get recycled? thrown out? Burned?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by The Master Control P ( 655590 )
      The membrane doesn't absorb anything. Once you finish snickering at the graphic that depicts individual molecules passing through smoothly-machined pores, you can see it's just a molecular-size seive; The linear CO2 molecules can present a small enough cross-section to go through if they line up axially; Tetrahedral methane and larger organic chains can't, so it efficiently sorts fluids based on molecule size.

      It looks a lot like a nanopatterned plastic zeolite [wikipedia.org] actually.

  • separate CO2 from air? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Could a variant of this extract CO2 directly from air, by making the pores big enough for O2 and N but not CO2? Probably not scalable to scrubbing global-warming agents from the atmosphere, but might be useful for extracting carbon from air to combine with hydrogen from wind or nuclear, to product synthetic methane or liquid fuel. The alternative is to use carbon from biomass, but that requires harvesting and transportation; pulling it straight out of air would be simpler.
    • The size of the pores defines what the membrane will filter. Now, to my limited chemical knowledge, a molecule consisting of 2 oxygen atoms is going to be smaller than a molecule consisting of 2 oxygen atoms and a carbon atom. On those grounds, the membrane would have to be used in reverse as it were, allowing the O2 and N2(how big is N2, compared to CO2 ?) to pass through while trapping the CO2. The efficiency of simply filtering normal atmosphere wouldnt be very high though. Much more cost effective to f

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by orkysoft ( 93727 )
      It would be even simpler to put those membranes on top of smoke stacks of factories, that way, they could isolate the CO2 near the big sources.

      The many small sources would be a lot harder, of course.

  • I'm sure some bright spot will be able to explain it away. How now they have a new technology that can do it faster, cheaper and better than ever before-- and yet somehow, in the end, it will translate to more cost to the consumer.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kybred ( 795293 )

      I'm sure some bright spot will be able to explain it away. How now they have a new technology that can do it faster, cheaper and better than ever before-- and yet somehow, in the end, it will translate to more cost to the consumer.

      3 words: Patent License Fees

  • Any improvement in desalination is a welcome one. We need big desalination plants around the world to feasibly meet demands for fresh water.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Sody ( 940054 )

      Yes. This is missed on most readers in the U.S., but getting fresh water when you mostly have salt water around is no picnic. Depending on how much the pore shape improves flow, this could make reverse osmosis desalination [wikipedia.org] much more energy efficient. Such high pressures are required (about 60-80 atmospheres, according to Wiki) that a strong and more efficient membrane could make a big difference.

      In the end, that's a big way this membrane could reduce CO2 emissions -- by saving energy and preventing us

  • That's nice and all, but... (Score:4, Informative)

    by r_jensen11 ( 598210 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @10:00PM (#20990383)
    It doesn't change the fact that we use plastics more often than we should. Melting plastic requires significantly more energy than melting glass. Recycling plastic also requires significantly more energy than recycling glass. Additionally, plastic can only be recycled a few times. Glass, on the other hand, has a much longer life.

    How about we bring back the glass bottles? We're already losing the glass beer bottles to plastic ones. I say we reverse the tide, and go back to glass Coke bottles. And wouldn't it be nice if those milk jugs were actually re-used?

    I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't find better plastics. All I'm saying is that I think, in addition to researching new plastics, we take time to look at the alternatives to plastics. Sometimes the old-fashioned methods work just as well, if not better, than new methods. You havn't seen a more efficient wheel invented in the last few thousand years, have you?

    • Wait... what?? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )
      "Melting plastic requires significantly more energy than melting glass."

      I hold in my hands a plastic bottle and a glass bottle, both used to have beer in them.

      I take my butane lighter, spark it, and hold the flame to the bottom of the plastic. Within seconds, it's melting and burning. I do that to the glass bottle, and I'll burn thru that whole lighter's fuel supply (which is energy) before I even turn the glass red.

      I'll say it probably takes more energy to melt glass rather than plastic.
      • Yep, I would like a little bit of what he is smoking.

        Perhaps what he really meant was that a glass bottle can be recycled to become a glass bottle again, while a plastic bottle cannot without great expense and thus is not.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Khyber ( 864651 )
          It kinda depends upon the plastic really. Some of it just needs to get warm enough and it'll simply fuse with other plastics of the same type, requiring minimal heat and pressure. Other types need to be shredded down to be easily melted down and recycled. Glass, on the other hand, requires huge amounts of energy just in melting it. That says nothing about the added energy use of machines designed to handle such hot material.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Silentknyght ( 1042778 )
      Plastic can be recycled many, many times; more than just "a few." The phenomenon to which you are referring is due to dyes. Clear plastics are highly desirable for recycling, because they can be reused for many different applications and/or products. When you recycle dyed plastics, you limit your options--you can't make the plastic clear again--so you just add more dyes and, making the plastic opaque and darker, limit the desirability. Eventually, the recycled plastic does become filler for concrete bum
  • Great. The last thing we need are more plastics in our water supply http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/mixing-plastic-food-urban-legend?page=3 [webmd.com]
  • Maybe I'm just really tired, but it seems to me that if you varied the size and shape of the pores, you'd have a really simple way to do a wholesale analysis sample for complex molecules. You could have a "nose" for smelling in either liquid or air, allowing you to have a sensor that looked for all sorts of contaminants and gave immediate results.

    Perhaps, if these plastics were non-toxic, you could even have a plug in test that gave an immediate bacteriological or viral assay of a blood sample. So, instea
  • I see pollution of another kind here....yes plastics are not good, when we build them we cant recycle them so to speak without causing a lot of pollution, but we could always grind them down, and then use them as filler or something, but now that is solid as steel, how the hell would we grind them???

    Anyone have links about the recycling of plastics, would be a welcomed response, as I have a small interest in knowing about this.

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