deplastikisasi (BINASAKAN PLASTIK)
science direct: By Ron Kotrba
Shea is working to deploy the GR Technologies Co. Ltd. burner, which gasifies granulated waste plastics, first in Pennsylvania and then elsewhere in the United States. The first U.S. system is being commissioned at a greenhouse in Burgettstown, Pa.
Estimates suggest 200 billion pounds of plastic is produced every year. Due to the technical limitations or inconvenience of recycling, only a fraction of that material resurfaces in new plastic products. It takes no imagination whatsoever to throw away plastic and doom it to the fate of a thousand years in a landfill, but plastic waste doesn't just threaten terra firma.
The Pacific Ocean is home of the world's biggest landfill: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Air and ocean currents form a huge, slow-moving spiral of debris-mostly plastic-accumulated from all corners of the globe through decades. And unlike biological material, plastic doesn't biodegrade and decompose. Instead, plastic photodegrades, meaning it shatters infinitely into smaller and smaller pieces without actually chemically breaking down. Because of this, the amount of plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch only grows.
The tiny plastic bits, called nurdles or "Mermaid tears," are reported to outnumber plankton in the vast region six-to-one and are mistaken as food by bottom feeders and other filter feeders, which poses a threat to the entire food chain. The water-bound garbage dump has gotten so large it has split into eastern and western patches. Reports indicate the eastern patch, located between Hawaii and California, is twice as big as the state of Texas.
Plastic used specifically for agricultural purposes is called plasticulture (plastic and agriculture), much of which cannot be or is not recycled for various reasons. Cal Poly, San Luis
Obispo professor Sean Hurley compiled survey data from California farmers earlier this year, regarding their use of plastics in agricultural operations. According to Hurley, 43 percent of California growers indicated that they use some form of plasticulture in their operations. Hurley estimates California growers dispose of more than 55,000 tons of
plasticulture every year.
Earlier this year Biomass Magazine reported on work conducted by Pennsylvania State University professor James Garthe, who has developed a prototype machine to convert waste plasticulture into Plastofuel-the trademarked name for the dense, plastic nuggets intended eventually for cofiring with coal at a power plant. Garthe, on extended leave until mid-October, was unavailable for a Plastofuel update but his PSU colleague, professor William Lamont, says Garthe is working on the fourth edition of the Plastofuel maker and when he returns from leave will complete that work and then testing will begin. "We hope to then take nonrecyclable waste plastics from the university and convert them into Plastofuel in quantities that can be burned in a small power-generating facility," Lamont says. "We really need to convert all the plastic waste except for PVC which, at this point, cannot be recycled into fuel." PVC, or poly vinyl chloride, is considered by many experts to be the most toxic plastic of all because of its high chloride content. While Garthe strives to streamline the Plastofuel production process, a related PSU project nearing the commissioning phase is underway.
Gasifying Granulated Waste Plastics
In 1999, GR Technologies Co. Ltd. in Seoul, South Korea, invented a high-temperature burner designed to be fueled by plastics. A relationship with the Korean company and PSU developed. After years of working together in varying capacities, a subsidiary of GR Technologies Co. was formed earlier this year in Pennsylvania, Eco-Clean Burners LLC, with the purpose of deploying the plastic-burner technology in the United States. It's not combustion-oriented like the Plastofuel nuggets, but rather this project involves gasification of granulated waste plastics. Industrial makers of plastic parts generate a lot of plastic wastes, which sometimes is granulated before being dumped into a landfill so companies are not paying to dump airspace. The burner project is headed up by John Joseph Shea, a PSU economic and community development extension associate. "The Plastofuel project and this project are closely related but don't really touch each other," Shea says. While the burner was developed in South Korea, Shea has been working to turn the technology "into a user-friendly machine for the United States," he says.
According to a PSU document, stack tests conforming to U.S. EPA standards were conducted on the burner unit by an independent testing company based in the United States. The emissions testing evaluated the burner fueled with pelleted No. 4 low-density polyethylene (LDPE) from Korea; granulated No. 2 high-density polyethylene from discarded plastic barrels; and granulated, dirty No. 4 LDPE mulch-film. Three main categories of pollutants were tested: particulate matter; gases (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide); and dioxins/furans. "Test results proved that this is an extremely clean-burning system," the document states.
"It's complete gasification," Shea tells Biomass Magazine. "There's no melting or slagging. The burner takes the granulated plastic, sized in diameter between 2 and 10 millimeters, from a solid to a liquid to a gas immediately in the combustion chamber, Shea explains. "That gas is actually producing the heat we need to transfer into the boiler system." During the gasification of the granulated waste plastic, temperatures are so high-1,850 degrees Fahrenheit-the studies indicate emissions profiles cleaner than that of natural gas. "It's amazing," Shea says. "I've run this machine for years-demos and such-and you could stand right next to it and there's nothing coming out of that barrel but a flame and heat."
In Pennsylvania, the department of environmental protection doesn't regulate emissions from combustion units with a heat-input rating less than 2.5 million British thermal units an hour (MMBtu/hr) and, therefore, units sized less than 2.5 MMBtu/hr require no permits to begin burning, or gasifying, waste plastics.
Eco-Clean Burners and Shea are finishing installation of an 800,000-Btu/hr plastic-burner unit at a greenhouse called Iannetti's Garden Center in Burgettstown, Pa. "Here at Iannetti's is the first place we've installed one of these burners," Shea says. "We haven't actually run it yet. We've been installing it all summer and now we're waiting for some cold weather to try it out and do some heating. By next spring we should be able to tabulate the numbers and see how effective it will actually be." He says the system is designed to gasify 30 to 33 pounds an hour of granulated waste plastic.
Catalytic Pyrolysis of Waste Plastics
While interest in combusting and gasifying plastic appears to be growing, there is another route to making practical use of all the waste plastics modern society produces. Through what it calls catalytic pyrolysis, Polymer Energy LLC, a division of Northern Technologies International Corp., has developed a system to convert waste plastics into liquid hydrocarbons, coke and gas, which can then be used as boiler fuel for power generation. "The technology uses lower temperatures than gasification-significantly lower-so it's more energy efficient to produce," says Kathy Radosevich, business development manager with Polymer Energy. Through "random depolymerization," or selective breaking of carbon-to-carbon bonds, in addition to feeding in proprietary catalytic additives, the reactor melts and vaporizes waste plastic in one step at temperatures between 840 and 1,020 degrees F. The company reports that, on average, 78 percent of every pound of plastic fed into the Polymer Energy system is converted to liquid hydrocarbons, coke and gas. The resultant coke can be further processed to produce additional fuel oil.
Polymer Energy's catalytic pyrolysis system processes polyolefins like polyethylene and polypropylene with up to 5 percent other plastic materials, plus up to 25 percent additional nonplastic waste, such as paper, glass, sand and water-making it ideal for processing municipal wastes.
Radosevich says the company has already sold nearly 20 of these systems in Europe, India and Thailand. "The interest in the United States and Canada is huge but I expect that we won't be marketing units in North America until next year some time," she tells Biomass Magazine. Hitherto the markets for these units outside North America have been "more conducive" mainly because higher fuel prices in places such as Europe and India have increased the desire for such alternative-fuel production units. "In the United States I'm doing preliminary testing for EPA approval, although I don't anticipate we'll have any problems � The only item that would be of interest to EPA that I can think of would be any type of contaminants in the ash." According to Polymer Energy, the output oil contains no chlorine, sulfur, nitrogen or heavy metals. Any of that material would remain in the ash, which Radosevich says would differ on an individual usage basis depending on the average makeup of the plastic-waste feedstock. "What we would do is sample the input plastic and the [post-processed] ash, and cross-check that with local requirements the community has for permit approvals," she says.
Clearly there is growing interest in doing something different with waste plastic than dumping it in landfills or the oceans. The global community must force itself to change its present path and become truly concerned about the environment in which its descendents will be raised, for what people do today affects everyone tomorrow.
Ron Kotrba is a Biomass Magazine senior writer. Reach him at rkotrba@bbiinternational.com or (701) 738-4942.
YOGYAKARTA okezone - Keberadaan sampah plastik selama ini menjadi persoalan di setiap daerah. Bukan hanya sulit terurai dan dibuang menjadi limbah, tapi sampah plastik juga menyebabkan kerusakan lingkungan.
Shea is working to deploy the GR Technologies Co. Ltd. burner, which gasifies granulated waste plastics, first in Pennsylvania and then elsewhere in the United States. The first U.S. system is being commissioned at a greenhouse in Burgettstown, Pa.
Estimates suggest 200 billion pounds of plastic is produced every year. Due to the technical limitations or inconvenience of recycling, only a fraction of that material resurfaces in new plastic products. It takes no imagination whatsoever to throw away plastic and doom it to the fate of a thousand years in a landfill, but plastic waste doesn't just threaten terra firma.
The Pacific Ocean is home of the world's biggest landfill: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Air and ocean currents form a huge, slow-moving spiral of debris-mostly plastic-accumulated from all corners of the globe through decades. And unlike biological material, plastic doesn't biodegrade and decompose. Instead, plastic photodegrades, meaning it shatters infinitely into smaller and smaller pieces without actually chemically breaking down. Because of this, the amount of plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch only grows.
The tiny plastic bits, called nurdles or "Mermaid tears," are reported to outnumber plankton in the vast region six-to-one and are mistaken as food by bottom feeders and other filter feeders, which poses a threat to the entire food chain. The water-bound garbage dump has gotten so large it has split into eastern and western patches. Reports indicate the eastern patch, located between Hawaii and California, is twice as big as the state of Texas.
Plastic used specifically for agricultural purposes is called plasticulture (plastic and agriculture), much of which cannot be or is not recycled for various reasons. Cal Poly, San Luis
Obispo professor Sean Hurley compiled survey data from California farmers earlier this year, regarding their use of plastics in agricultural operations. According to Hurley, 43 percent of California growers indicated that they use some form of plasticulture in their operations. Hurley estimates California growers dispose of more than 55,000 tons of
plasticulture every year.
Earlier this year Biomass Magazine reported on work conducted by Pennsylvania State University professor James Garthe, who has developed a prototype machine to convert waste plasticulture into Plastofuel-the trademarked name for the dense, plastic nuggets intended eventually for cofiring with coal at a power plant. Garthe, on extended leave until mid-October, was unavailable for a Plastofuel update but his PSU colleague, professor William Lamont, says Garthe is working on the fourth edition of the Plastofuel maker and when he returns from leave will complete that work and then testing will begin. "We hope to then take nonrecyclable waste plastics from the university and convert them into Plastofuel in quantities that can be burned in a small power-generating facility," Lamont says. "We really need to convert all the plastic waste except for PVC which, at this point, cannot be recycled into fuel." PVC, or poly vinyl chloride, is considered by many experts to be the most toxic plastic of all because of its high chloride content. While Garthe strives to streamline the Plastofuel production process, a related PSU project nearing the commissioning phase is underway.
Gasifying Granulated Waste Plastics
In 1999, GR Technologies Co. Ltd. in Seoul, South Korea, invented a high-temperature burner designed to be fueled by plastics. A relationship with the Korean company and PSU developed. After years of working together in varying capacities, a subsidiary of GR Technologies Co. was formed earlier this year in Pennsylvania, Eco-Clean Burners LLC, with the purpose of deploying the plastic-burner technology in the United States. It's not combustion-oriented like the Plastofuel nuggets, but rather this project involves gasification of granulated waste plastics. Industrial makers of plastic parts generate a lot of plastic wastes, which sometimes is granulated before being dumped into a landfill so companies are not paying to dump airspace. The burner project is headed up by John Joseph Shea, a PSU economic and community development extension associate. "The Plastofuel project and this project are closely related but don't really touch each other," Shea says. While the burner was developed in South Korea, Shea has been working to turn the technology "into a user-friendly machine for the United States," he says.
According to a PSU document, stack tests conforming to U.S. EPA standards were conducted on the burner unit by an independent testing company based in the United States. The emissions testing evaluated the burner fueled with pelleted No. 4 low-density polyethylene (LDPE) from Korea; granulated No. 2 high-density polyethylene from discarded plastic barrels; and granulated, dirty No. 4 LDPE mulch-film. Three main categories of pollutants were tested: particulate matter; gases (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide); and dioxins/furans. "Test results proved that this is an extremely clean-burning system," the document states.
"It's complete gasification," Shea tells Biomass Magazine. "There's no melting or slagging. The burner takes the granulated plastic, sized in diameter between 2 and 10 millimeters, from a solid to a liquid to a gas immediately in the combustion chamber, Shea explains. "That gas is actually producing the heat we need to transfer into the boiler system." During the gasification of the granulated waste plastic, temperatures are so high-1,850 degrees Fahrenheit-the studies indicate emissions profiles cleaner than that of natural gas. "It's amazing," Shea says. "I've run this machine for years-demos and such-and you could stand right next to it and there's nothing coming out of that barrel but a flame and heat."
In Pennsylvania, the department of environmental protection doesn't regulate emissions from combustion units with a heat-input rating less than 2.5 million British thermal units an hour (MMBtu/hr) and, therefore, units sized less than 2.5 MMBtu/hr require no permits to begin burning, or gasifying, waste plastics.
Eco-Clean Burners and Shea are finishing installation of an 800,000-Btu/hr plastic-burner unit at a greenhouse called Iannetti's Garden Center in Burgettstown, Pa. "Here at Iannetti's is the first place we've installed one of these burners," Shea says. "We haven't actually run it yet. We've been installing it all summer and now we're waiting for some cold weather to try it out and do some heating. By next spring we should be able to tabulate the numbers and see how effective it will actually be." He says the system is designed to gasify 30 to 33 pounds an hour of granulated waste plastic.
Catalytic Pyrolysis of Waste Plastics
While interest in combusting and gasifying plastic appears to be growing, there is another route to making practical use of all the waste plastics modern society produces. Through what it calls catalytic pyrolysis, Polymer Energy LLC, a division of Northern Technologies International Corp., has developed a system to convert waste plastics into liquid hydrocarbons, coke and gas, which can then be used as boiler fuel for power generation. "The technology uses lower temperatures than gasification-significantly lower-so it's more energy efficient to produce," says Kathy Radosevich, business development manager with Polymer Energy. Through "random depolymerization," or selective breaking of carbon-to-carbon bonds, in addition to feeding in proprietary catalytic additives, the reactor melts and vaporizes waste plastic in one step at temperatures between 840 and 1,020 degrees F. The company reports that, on average, 78 percent of every pound of plastic fed into the Polymer Energy system is converted to liquid hydrocarbons, coke and gas. The resultant coke can be further processed to produce additional fuel oil.
Polymer Energy's catalytic pyrolysis system processes polyolefins like polyethylene and polypropylene with up to 5 percent other plastic materials, plus up to 25 percent additional nonplastic waste, such as paper, glass, sand and water-making it ideal for processing municipal wastes.
Radosevich says the company has already sold nearly 20 of these systems in Europe, India and Thailand. "The interest in the United States and Canada is huge but I expect that we won't be marketing units in North America until next year some time," she tells Biomass Magazine. Hitherto the markets for these units outside North America have been "more conducive" mainly because higher fuel prices in places such as Europe and India have increased the desire for such alternative-fuel production units. "In the United States I'm doing preliminary testing for EPA approval, although I don't anticipate we'll have any problems � The only item that would be of interest to EPA that I can think of would be any type of contaminants in the ash." According to Polymer Energy, the output oil contains no chlorine, sulfur, nitrogen or heavy metals. Any of that material would remain in the ash, which Radosevich says would differ on an individual usage basis depending on the average makeup of the plastic-waste feedstock. "What we would do is sample the input plastic and the [post-processed] ash, and cross-check that with local requirements the community has for permit approvals," she says.
Clearly there is growing interest in doing something different with waste plastic than dumping it in landfills or the oceans. The global community must force itself to change its present path and become truly concerned about the environment in which its descendents will be raised, for what people do today affects everyone tomorrow.
Ron Kotrba is a Biomass Magazine senior writer. Reach him at rkotrba@bbiinternational.com or (701) 738-4942.
🌸
Thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of plastic waste
1Instituto de Macromoléculas Eloisa Mano, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil
The amount of plastic waste is growing every year and with that comes an environmental concern regarding this problem. Pyrolysis as a tertiary recycling process is presented as a solution. Pyrolysis can be thermal or catalytical and can be performed under different experimental conditions. These conditions affect the type and amount of product obtained. With the pyrolysis process, products can be obtained with high added value, such as fuel oils and feedstock for new products. Zeolites can be used as catalysts in catalytic pyrolysis and influence the final products obtained.
Keywords: catalytic pyrolysis; fuel oils; thermal pyrolysis; zeolites
1 INTRODUCTION
Plastics are materials that offer a fundamental contribution to our society, due to its versatility and relatively low cost. As a result of this contribution, a large amount of plastic waste is generated due to the increase in its production each year. This increase in the amount of waste does cause some environmental problems, since plastics do not degrade quickly and can remain in the environment for a long time[1-5]. A large part of this waste is disposed of in landfills or is incinerated[6,7].
However, the plastic waste are bulkier than other organic residues and thus occupy massive space in landfills and therefore the proper disposal and incineration have high costs. Furthermore, incineration of these waste plastics results in environmental problems due to increased emission of harmful compounds[2,6-8].
It is necessary for more sustainable solutions that incineration and disposal in landfills are researched and developed[4]. Thus, much research in the area of recycling and reuse of these post-consumed polymers have been carried out in order to produce raw materials and energy[1,3,7].
The various types of recycling are good options to control the increase of plastic waste, because they are environmentally friendly when compared with incineration and disposal in landfills. In fact, from recycling it is possible to recover raw materials, energy and fuel while minimizing the consumption of natural resources and raw materials. When these products and energy are recovered, the environmental impacts of industrial activity are reduced[1,3,9,10].
Municipal waste plastics are heterogeneous, unlike industrial. For homogeneous plastic waste, the repelletization and remoulding can be a simple and effective means of recycling. However, when these wastes are heterogeneous and consist of mixtures of resins, they are unsuitable for such recovery. In this case, other forms of recycling[11] are necessary. Each recycling method provides a number of advantages that make them beneficial for local and specific applications[12]. Appropriate treatment of plastic waste is an important question for waste management, due to energy, environmental, economic, and political[11] aspects.
The plastics recycling methods, in accordance with ASTM D5033-00, are divided into four types according to the final result, one of them being the tertiary or chemical recycling. In this type of recycling chemical degradation leads to production of liquid fuels and chemicals with high added value from waste plastic fragments or segregated[2,8,13,14].
One of the tertiary recycling methods is pyrolysis. This process can be thermal or catalytic and is a promising alternative that allows the conversion of polymers into gas and liquid hydrocarbons[4,15,16].
Pyrolysis is a process with relatively low cost from which a wide distribution of products can be obtained. In the process of pyrolysis, where heating occurs in the absence of oxygen, the organic compounds are decomposed generating gaseous and liquid products, which can be used as fuels and / or sources of chemicals. Meanwhile, the inorganic material, free of organic matter, remains unchanged under the solid fraction and can be recycled later[17].
The thermal pyrolysis requires high temperatures, which often results in products with low quality, making this process unfeasible. This occurs because the uncatalyzed thermal degradation gives rise to low molecular weight substances, however in a very wide range of products[13,15,16].
This method can be improved by the addition of catalysts, which will reduce the temperature and reaction time and allow the production of hydrocarbons with a higher added value, such as fuel oils and petrochemical feedstocks[4,11,18-21]. That is, the use of catalysts gives an added value to the pyrolysis and cracking efficiency of these catalysts depends both on its chemical and physical characteristics. These particular properties, promote the breaking of C-C bonds and determine the length of the chains of the products obtained[17,22].
For Brazilian cities, the percentage of high and low density polyethylene (HDPE and LDPE, respectively), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), Poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) and polypropylene (PP) found in municipal solid wastes are 89% and the other polymers account for the other 11%[13]. Therefore, polyolefins (PE, PP and their copolymers) are the most widely used thermoplastics for several applications and are most of the polymeric residues, that make up 60-70% of municipal solid waste[23].
Tertiary recycling of plastic waste containing PVC releases hydrogen chloride, which causes corrosion of the pyrolysis reactor and formation of organochlorine compounds[23]. The presence of chlorine is very harmful for use as fuel in the pyrolysis liquid products obtained[24]. Although plastic waste may be considered economical sources of chemicals and energy, recycling of mixed plastic waste containing PVC not only result in the formation of volatile organic compounds in products, also in the emission of pollution when they are applied[23].
Moreover, PET may be mechanically recycled obtaining fibers for carpets, clothes and bottles. The products obtained in this recycling are of high quality that can be compared with virgin polymer[12]. Therefore, PET and other special polymers should be removed from municipal waste by mechanical recovery, which is economically viable.
1.1 Pyrolysis
The tertiary or chemical recycling includes a variety of processes that enable the generation of high value products such as fuel or chemicals[11,16,19-21,25-27].
In this method, the plastic waste is processed to produce basic petrochemical compounds, which can be used as raw material for new plastics. This process has the advantage of working with mixed and contaminated plastics[12,18,20,27].
Recently, much attention has been directed to chemical recycling, particularly the uncatalyzed thermal cracking (thermolysis), catalytic cracking and steam decomposition, as methods for producing various hydrocarbon fractions in the range of fuel, from solid waste plastics[12].
In the case of polymers, pyrolysis stands out as tertiary recycling method, however this cracking gives rise to low molecular weight substances, however unfortunately in a very wide range of products, in the case of non-catalyzed thermal decomposition[11,13,15,16,18,26]. The pyrolysis can be carried out at different temperatures, reaction times, pressures, in the presence or absence of catalysts and reactive gases. The pyrolysis process involves the breaking of bonds, and is generally endothermic and hence the supply of heat is essential to react the material[28]. In polymeric samples, the decomposition process may occur through the elimination of small molecules, chain scission (depolymerization) or random cleavage[29].
In the pyrolysis process, the sample is heated in the absence of oxygen and the organic compounds are decomposed generating gaseous and liquid products. On the other hand, the inorganic part of the sample, free from organic matter remains practically unchanged in the solid fraction enabling their separation and recovery for subsequent reuse. Therefore, the pyrolysis is an attractive alternative technique for recycling waste plastics recycling[2,8,17,24,30].
Thermal pyrolysis involves the decomposition of polymeric materials by means of temperature when it is applied under inert atmospheric conditions. This process is usually conducted at temperatures between 350 and 900 °C. In the case of polyolefins, which make up much of urban waste plastics, the process proceeds through random cleavage mechanism that generates a heterogeneous mixture of linear paraffins and olefins in a wide range of molar masses[11,18,20,21].
On the other hand, the catalyzed pyrolysis promotes these decomposition reactions at lower temperatures and shorter times, because of the presence of catalysts that assist in the process. Thus, the catalytic pyrolysis presents a number of advantages over thermal, such as lower energy consumption and product formation with narrower distribution of the number of carbon atoms, which may be directed to aromatic hydrocarbons with light and high market value[11,18-21,26].
The kinetics of degradation and the pyrolysis mechanism are still being studied and discussed. Degradation has a very complex mechanism, so adequate description of decomposing a mixture of polymers is difficult, even more so in the presence of catalysts and a process with several stages[7,30]. In order to solve this problem there are some methods based on the mass loss curve during pyrolysis.
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) is a method that can be used to determine the loss of mass and kinetic parameters. Thermogravimetric analysis of pyrolysis involves the thermal degradation of the sample in an inert atmosphere obtaining simultaneously the weight loss values of the samples with increasing temperature at a constant heating rate[4,21,31].
Most of the techniques that are used to monitor the reactions, both for the identification of products of the gas phase and by thermogravimetric analysis, will only detect the reaction when the molecules of the products become small enough to evaporate in the gas fraction and can be observed as gas fraction or by means of mass loss of the initial sample. Is possible to follow the reaction from the beginning, since each broken link consume certain amount of energy. Thus, by measuring the heat flow into the sample during the reaction (using for example the calorimeter DSC method), it is possible to measure the rate of broken bonds occurring in the sample[4].
The reaction rates and other kinetic parameters of the degradation of the polymer are dependent on the chemical structure of these polymers. Generally the CC bonds of the polymer backbone are broken forming a higher degree of branching structures, due to the lower thermal stability of the tertiary carbon atom. Moreover, the mechanism may also be affected by contaminants. The actual reason for the differences between the rates of degradation of the macromolecules has been explained by the distortion of electron density from the degraded polymer, which depends primarily on the side group linked to the main chain of the macromolecule. For this reason, polypropylene (PP) is less stable than polyethylene (LDPE, HDPE or LLDPE), for example[7].
The mechanism of degradation of polymers has generally been described as free radical in the case of a thermal process without catalyst. However, when catalysts are used, it is generally ionic mechanism[7].
When catalysts are utilized in the pyrolysis occur two kinds of decomposition mechanisms simultaneously: thermal cracking, which in turn can follow different mechanisms (random chain scission, scission the end of the chain and / or elimination of side groups) and catalytic cracking (carbenium ions adsorbed on the catalyst surface, beta scission and desorption). As a result, a wide variety of products is generated, which in turn will react with each other resulting in a countless number of possible reaction mechanisms[30].
For the pyrolysis of polyolefins, the degradation mechanism occurs by random chain scission, where free radicals are generated propagating chain reactions and thus resulting in the cracking of polymers in a wide range of hydrocarbons that make up liquid and gaseous fractions[32]. Several factors influence the process and the most important are: residence time, temperature and the type of pyrolysis agent. When the residence time and temperature increase, the composition of the obtained product shifts to more thermodynamically stable compounds[2,8,20,32].
The pyrolysis products can be used as an alternative fuel or as a source of chemicals[30]. The composition of the product also depends on the presence of catalysts (including concentrations and types). Higher temperatures decrease the yield of hydrogen, methane, acetylene and aromatic compounds, whereas lower temperatures favor the generation of gas products[32].
Previous experiments to evaluate the polymer degradation process are important because they provide information on the feasibility of recycling these polymers raw materials and even fuels. However, most studies are focused on pyrolysis of pure polymers and unmixed[7].
1.1.1 Thermal pyrolysis
The pyrolysis of waste plastics involves the thermal decomposition in the absence of oxygen / air. During the pyrolysis, the polymer materials are heated to high temperatures and thus, their macromolecules are broken into smaller molecules, resulting in the formation of a wide range hydrocarbons. The products obtained from the pyrolysis can be divided into non-condensable gas fraction, liquid fraction (consisting of paraffins, olefins, naphthenes and aromatics) and solid waste. From the liquid fraction can be recovered hydrocarbons in the gasoline range (C4-C12), diesel (C12-C23), kerosene (C10-C18) and motor oil (C23-C40)[1,3,18,20,33-35].
The thermal cracking usually produces a mixture of low value hydrocarbons having a wide variety of products, including hydrogen to coke. In general, when the pyrolysis temperature is high, there is increased production of non-condensable gaseous fraction and a lower liquid fuels such as diesel. The yield and composition of the products obtained are not controlled only by the temperature but also the duration of the reaction[33].
The thermal pyrolysis proceeds according to the radical chain reactions with hydrogen transfer steps and the gradual breakdown of the main chain. The mechanism involves the stages of initiation, propagation and / or free radical transfer followed by β chain scission and termination[20,34,36]. This mechanism provides many oligomers by hydrogen transfer from the tertiary carbon atom along the polymer chain to the radical site[18]. The thermal cracking is more difficult for the high density polyethylene (HDPE), followed by the low density (LDPE) and then by polypropylene (PP)[20]. This is due to high content of tertiary carbons of PP.
The initiation step comprises homolytic breaking of carbon-carbon bond, either by random chain scission as by cleavage at the end of the chain, resulting in two radicals[36,37]. For PP and PE the chain scission occurs at random[37].
This step is followed by hydrogen transfer reactions intra / intermolecular forming more stable radicals secondary. These intermediate radicals can be submitted to break the carbon-carbon bond by scission β to produce compounds saturated or with unsaturated terminal and new radicals. The transfer of intra / intermolecular hydrogen depend on the experimental conditions, the first of which leads to an increase in the production of olefins and diolefins, paraffins results in the second[34,36,37].
The termination reactions can occur, for example, by disproportionation, which can produce different olefins and alkanes or a combination of radicals can lead to the same products. Branched products can be formed from the interaction between two secondary radicals or between a secondary radical with a primary[36,37].
As a consequence of these mechanisms, the thermal pyrolysis leads to a wide distribution of hydrocarbon, a C5-C80 range, each fraction being mainly composed of diene, 1-olefin and n-paraffin. At high temperatures hydrogen is formed in significant amounts. Products obtained by thermal cracking are of limited commercial value, especially being applied as fuel. For heavy oils, it has been proposed its use as a wax[36]. Obtaining this wide range of products is one of the major drawbacks of this technique, which requires temperatures of 500 °C to 900 °C. These factors severely limit its applicability and increase the cost of recycling raw material of plastic waste[23].
1.1.2 Catalytic pyrolysis
The thermal pyrolysis requires high temperatures due to the low thermal conductivity of polymers[20], which is not very selective and a possible solution to reduce these reaction conditions is the use of catalyzed pyrolysis. Catalytic pyrolysis is an alternative to the recycling of pure or mixed plastics waste[30]. The catalyst can promote:
- reduced costs[40];
- faster cracking reactions, leading to smaller residence times and reactors with smaller volumes[36];
- inhibiting the formation of undesirable products[36];
- inhibiting the formation of products consisting primarily of cyclic hydrocarbons, aromatic and branched, in the case of polyolefins catalytic cracking[36];
- obtain liquid products with a lower boiling point range[33].
Homogeneous and heterogeneous catalyst systems have been employed in the cracking polymers. In general, heterogeneous catalysts have been more used due to the ease of their separation and recovery of the reaction[36,39]. The homogeneous catalysts especially used are Lewis acids, as AlCl3, fused metal tetracloroaluminatos (M (AlCl4) n), where the metal may be lithium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium or barium and n can be 1 or 2)[36].
A wide variety of heterogeneous catalysts has been used and among them are: conventional solid acids (such as zeolites, silica-alumina, alumina and FCC catalysts (Fluid Catalytic Cracking)), mesostructured catalysts (such as MCM-41 etc.), nanocrystalline zeolites (such as n-HZSM-5), among others[25,35,36,39].
Many studies have been carried out describing the cracking of pure polyolefins over various solid acids such as zeolites, clays, among others. The use of zeolites has been shown to be effective in improving the quality of products obtained in the pyrolysis of polyethylene and other addition polymers. The acidity of their active sites and its crystalline microporous structure (textural properties) favor hydrogen transfer reactions and thereby make them suitable for obtaining high conversions of gas at relatively low temperatures, between 350 and 500 °C[11,18,22,41-44]. That is, these features allow milder operating conditions (lower temperatures and reaction times) than a thermal pyrolysis[4,25,30,45].
Differences in the catalytic activity of these solids are related to their acidic properties, especially the strength and number of acidic sites. The properties of these solid structures, as the specific area, particle size and pore size distribution, also have a crucial role in their performance, they control accessibility of voluminous molecules of the polyolefin internal catalytically active sites. While most work on catalytic cracking of polymers has been performed with pure polymers, it is accepted that the decomposition process can be affected by the presence of contaminants as well as chemical changes that occur in the polymer structure during use[11,20,21,34,42,46].
As mentioned, the catalyst pore size and acidity are important factors in the catalytic cracking of polymers[40,43,47]. Generally, the level of catalytic activity in the polyolefin pyrolysis increases with increasing the number of acidic sites. Thus, it is known that zeolite catalysts achieve higher conversions acids non-zeolitic catalysts[42].
The mechanism of this process which involves the formation of a carbenium ion (isomerization, random chain scission and β cleavage, hydrogen transfer, oligomerization / alkylation, aromatization) is influenced by the strength, density and distribution of the acid sites of the catalyst. This determines the products obtained in these reactions. Solid acid catalysts such as zeolites, favor hydrogen transfer reactions due to the presence of many acid sites[11,18,22,36,42,44].
The acid strength of the solid is characterized by the presence of Lewis or Brønsted acid sites. In the case of crystalline solid acids, it is believed that most of the acid sites are located inside the pores of the material, as in the case of zeolites[11,42].
Cracking is processed either by random chain scission (medium or weak acidity), for scission at the end of the chain (strong acidity) to give waxes and distillates (gasoil, gasoline) or light hydrocarbons (C3-C5 olefins), respectively. These primary cracking products may be removed from the reaction medium or subjected to secondary reactions (such as oligomerization, cyclization and aromatization). The relative extent of these reactions is connected to the acidity and properties of catalyst, but also to experimental variables employed (such as reactor type, temperature, residence time, etc.)[36].
Catalysts having acidic sites on the surface and with the possibility of donating hydrogen ion increase rate of the isomerization products and increase the yield of hydrocarbon isomers and the quality of the fuel formed. Catalysts containing strong acid sites, higher density, are more effective in cracking polyolefins. However, the strong acidity and high pore size cause rapid deactivation of the catalyst. Thus, according to literature, it is preferable to carry out the pyrolysis of polyolefins in the presence of a catalyst with light acidity and long life[33].
Other types of catalysts which may be used in the pyrolysis process are catalysts with Lewis acid sites which are electron pair acceptors. As examples of such catalysts, there are AlCl3, FeCl3, TiCl4 and TiCl3, which are strong Lewis acids[47]. These catalysts may be dissolved in molten polymer, which substantially increases the cracking efficiency while reducing its consumption. These types of catalysts have acidic sites on their surfaces that change the charge distribution in the carbon chain, making them capable of abstracting hydride ions of hydrocarbons to produce carbonium ions. This increases the catalytic effect, enabling a reduction in pyrolysis temperature and promoting the generation of ions for olefinic and aromatic compounds[32].
However, the cost of the catalyst can greatly affect the economy of the process, even if it shows a good performance. To reduce this cost and make it even more attractive process, you can reuse the catalyst or use it in smaller quantities[23,42,48]. The biggest problem in the use of catalysts in the pyrolysis of plastics is that coke formation deactivates the catalyst over time, thereby decreasing its life cycle[33].
1.2 Comparison between thermal and catalytic pyrolysis
Seo et al.[49] studied the catalytic degradation of HDPE using a batch reactor at a temperature of 450 °C. As shown in Table 1, the pyrolysis performed with the zeolite ZSM-5 had higher yield of the gaseous fraction and smaller liquid fraction when compared with thermal cracking. According to the authors, this is explained by the properties of the catalyst. Most zeolites, including ZSM-5, showed excellent catalytic efficiency in cracking, isomerization and aromatization due to its strong acidic property and its microporous crystalline structure. The ZSM-5 zeolite has a three-dimensional pore channel structure with pore size of 5.4 × 5.6 Å which allows an increased cracking of larger molecules, beyond the high Si / Al ratio which leads to an increase in thermal stability and acidity. Thus, initially degraded material on the external surface of the catalyst can be dispersed in the smaller internal cavities of the catalyst thus decomposed gaseous hydrocarbons (molecules with smaller sizes).
Table 1 Yield in thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of HDPE with ZSM-5[49].
| Product Yield (% wt.) | Thermal Pyrolysis | Catalytic Pyrolysis | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gas Fraction | 13.0 | 63.5 | |
| Liquid Fraction | Total | 84.0 | 35.0 |
| C6-C12 | 56.55 | 99.92 | |
| C13-C23 | 37.79 | 0.08 | |
| >C23 | 5.66 | 0.0 | |
| Solid Fraction | 3.0 | 1.5 | |
Marcilla et al.[34] also used a batch reactor to evaluate the thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of HDPE and LDPE with HZSM-5 catalyst. The processing temperature was 550 °C and the results are shown in Table 2. As can be seen, the condensable products were the major fraction for the thermal process and no solid fraction (coke) was detected. For the catalytic process an increase of the gas fraction, and this is due to the HZSM-5 catalyst present, which has strong and weak acid sites and an average pore size small. As mentioned above, this facilitates cracking leading to compounds with small sizes (gas fraction).
Table 2 Yield of the thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of LDPE and HDPE with HZSM-5[34].
| Product Yield (% wt.) | LDPE | HDPE | LDPE-HZSM-5 | HDPE-HZSM-5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gas Fraction | 14.6 | 16.3 | 70.7 | 72.6 |
| Liquid Fraction/wax | 93.1 | 84.7 | 18.3 | 17.3 |
| Solid Fraction | - | - | 0.5 | 0.7 |
The results for the batch reactor are similar. However, there are studies where the values for each product obtained are different. This is because in this type of reactor the heat transfer is not as favored and, consequently, other factors such as the size and quantity of the sample or the carrier gas flow can determine the type of product formed. Moreover, in such reactors the extent of secondary reactions is smaller than the fluidized bed reactor. Using fixed beds where polymer and catalyst are contacted directly leads to problems of blockage and difficulty in obtaining intimate contact over the whole reactor. Without effective contact the formation of large amounts of residue are likely, and scale-up to industrial scale is not feasible[15]. The low thermal conductivity and high viscosity of the plastic may lead to a difficulty in mass transfer and heat. These factors influence the distribution of products, in conjuction with the operating conditions[50].
1.3 Zeolites
Zeolites are microporous crystalline aluminosilicates of the elements of group 1A or 2A (especially sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium), whose chemical composition can be represented as follows: M2 / nO.Al2O3.ySiO2.wH2O, where y varies from 2 to 10, n is the valence of the cation and w is the amount of structural water[36]. Currently it is known the existence of minerals which have all essential requirements to be classified as zeolites, however, instead of aluminum (Al) and silicon (Si) occupying the tetrahedral positions are present elements such as phosphorus (P), beryllium (Be), among others[51,52].
They are composed of tetrahedra of SiO4, AlO4 and PO4 as primary structural units, which are linked through oxygen atoms. Each oxygen atom is shared by two silicon or aluminum atoms, thus giving rise to a three-dimensional microporous structure[46,53]. The combination of these two primary structures is found in the common zeolites, developing cavities of various shapes and sizes which are interconnected[42,51,53,54].
The AlO4 tetrahedron has a negative charge of -1, because the aluminum has a valence of +3, which is less than the valence of +4 silicon. This charge is balanced by cations of alkali metals or alkaline earth metals (typically Na +, K +, Ca +2 or Mg +2) present inside the porous zeolite structure by means of cation exchange, may be replaced by other cations. When these cations are exchanged for protons, zeolite acid sites are formed. This exchange allows modification of the original properties of zeolites. The acidity of the zeolite can be the Brønsted acid type, proton donors or Lewis acid type, pair of electron acceptor[46,53]. These channels and cavities are occupied by ions, water molecules or other adsorbates which, due to high mobility, allow the ion exchange[51,53].
The pore size corresponding to two-dimensional opening zeolite is determined by the number of tetrahedral atoms connected in sequence. The three-dimensional interactions lead to the most different geometries, forming from large internal cavities to a series of channels crossing the whole zeolite[55].
The pores of zeolites function as molecular sieves, blocking the free diffusion of large, bulky molecules inside the internal surface of the catalyst[41,54]. These molecular sieves combine high acidity with selectivity form. That is, are selective to separate molecules according to their shape and / or size, besides having a high specific area and high thermal stability to catalyze a variety of hydrocarbon reactions, including the cracking of polyolefins. The reactivity and the selectivity of zeolites as catalysts are determined by its high number of active sites, which are caused by an imbalance of charge between the silicon and aluminum atoms in the crystal, making the zeolite of the structural unit has a charge balance total least one[42,51].
However, the process of rupture of the polymer molecules starts on the external surface of the zeolites, since the polymer chains must be broken before penetrating the internal pores of the zeolites, due to its small pore size. The zeolites have a specific pore size and the access of polymer molecules to internal reactive sites of the catalyst, as well as the final products within the pores are limited by their size. As mentioned, the catalyst pore size and acidity are important factors in the catalytic cracking of polymers[40,43,47]. Generally, the level of catalytic activity in the pyrolysis of polyolefins increases with increasing the number of acidic sites. Thus, it is known that zeolite catalysts achieve higher conversions than non-zeolitic catalysts acids[42]. In addition, branching of the polymer or end chain of polyethylene can penetrate the pores of the zeolites, reacting the acid sites located there and so increasing the activity[34].
During the catalyzed pyrolysis, the polymer melts and is dispersed around the catalyst. The molten polymer is drawn into the spaces between the particles and therefore the active sites on the external surface of the catalyst. Reactions at the surface produce a low molecular weight materials, which are sufficiently volatile at the temperature of the reaction can diffuse through the polymer film as a product or may react even more in the pores. These reactions proceed via carbocation as transition state. The reaction rate is governed both by the nature of the carbocation formed as the nature and strength of the acid sites involved in catalysis. Regardless of how the carbocation is formed, it may be subjected to any of the following methods: load isomerization, the isomerization chain, hydride transfer, transfer of alkyl groups and formation and breaking of carbon-carbon bonds. As a result of this complex procedure, the product distribution reflects the action of the catalyst, which in turn is influenced by the size of its pores and for its chemical composition[34,56].
The catalytic decomposition of the polyethylene occurs at the carbenium ion mechanism. The initial step occurs either by abstraction of the hydride ion (for Lewis acid sites) or by addition of a proton (the Brønsted acid sites) in the C-C bonds of polyethylene molecules, or by thermal decomposition of polyolefins. Successive scission of the main chain occur to produce fragments having lower molecular weights than that of polyethylene. The resulting fragments are cracked or desidrociclizados in subsequent steps[18].
The acid sites on the catalyst surface are responsible for the initiation of the carbocationic mechanism, which induces the degradation of polyethylene and polypropylene. As mentioned above, these acid sites are originated the generated load imbalance when AlO4– is incorporated in the structure of zeolites. The content of AlO4–determines the number of acid sites in the catalyst while topological factors related to its crystalline or amorphous structure influence the strength of these acidic centers. Textural characteristics control the access of molecules that are reacting in the catalytic sites. This accessibility is important in catalyzed reactions involving large molecules such as polymers[21,57].
For presenting a microporous structure, zeolites have a higher internal surface than the external surface and this enables the mass transfer between these surfaces. However, the pore size is an important factor in this transfer, because only molecules with sizes smaller than these pores can enter or leave these spaces, which vary from one to another zeolite[53].
Some chemical and physical characteristics of zeolites ensures them their catalytic capacity. Among these characteristics can be cited: high specific area and adsorption capacity; active sites (which may be acidic) whose strength and concentration can be directed to a specific application; size channels and cavities compatible with the size of many molecules and a network of canals and cavities that provides you with a selectivity of shape, selectivity to the reactant, product and transition state species[53].
One of the factors that can affect the catalytic activity of zeolites is their deactivation by coke deposition on their channels. However, this coke formation rate depends on several factors, including: structure and acidity of the pores and the reaction conditions (such as temperature, pressure and nature of the reactants)[53].
The synthetic zeolites present some advantages and disadvantages in relation to natural zeolites. Among the advantages may be mentioned the purity, uniformity in size and shape of the channels and cavities, and a pre-defined chemical composition. The disadvantage has been their high cost and because of this, the synthetic zeolites are mainly intended for specific applications, where there is a need for a uniform composition and structure, for example, in the petroleum cracking process. Already the natural have a greater abundance and a lower cost of production, particularly if used in its in natura or if they require little beneficiation complex processes[51].
2 CONCLUSIONS
Consumption of plastics has increased over the years and the concern with their waste generated too. Because of this many studies have been done with the aim to recover or recycle the waste.
Pyrolysis has been effective compared to other disposal methods, because it can reuse the energy and the raw materials contained in those waste, reducing thereby the environmental impacts caused by the inadequate disposal of these waste plastics.
The pyrolysis process may be thermal or catalytic. Thermal degradation occurs by radical mechanism, and as a result of this mechanism the products formed have a broad distribution of the number of carbon atoms in the main chain.
In this type of the endothermic process due to the low thermal conductivity of polymers, there is a need for high temperatures. Because of that there is a high expenditure of energy. In order to decrease this temperature, catalysts may be used.
With the catalytic pyrolysis, the products obtained have a more narrow distribution of the number of carbon atoms being directed to more specific products. The composition and amount of the obtained products are listed as type of catalyst used. Furthermore, the catalytic reaction decreases the degradation time and the fraction of solid waste formed.
Generally, the catalysts used in the catalytic degradation are solid acids such as zeolites. This type of degradation involves production of the intermediate carbenium ion by hydrogen transfer reactions. Zeolites used favor these reactions due to their sites acids that help in the process of breaking the polymer macromolecules. This breaking process begins on the surface of the zeolite, because the polymer needs to be broken into smaller molecules before entering the internal pores of these solids, due to the small size of their pores. Zeolites have a specific molecular pore size and access of such molecules to catalytic reactive sites, as well as growth of the final products within such pores is limited by its size.
The other experimental parameters such as temperature, reaction time, reactor type and flow of carrier gas also influence the composition of the products obtained. Pyrolysis can be carried out either for pure polymers or for polymer blends.
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YOGYAKARTA okezone - Keberadaan sampah plastik selama ini menjadi persoalan di setiap daerah. Bukan hanya sulit terurai dan dibuang menjadi limbah, tapi sampah plastik juga menyebabkan kerusakan lingkungan.
Hal inilah membuat berbagai pihak berpikir dan mencari solusi mengatasi situasi itu. Prihatin dengan kondisi tersebut, Dosen Program Studi (Prodi) Teknik Kimia Universitas Ahmad Dahlan (UAD) Yogyakarta Zahrul Mufrodi melakukan inovasi memanfaatkan sampah plastik menjadi bahan bakar minyak (BBM) melalui proses pirolisis. Untuk mendapatkan BBM dari plastik ternyata tidak terlalu sulit. Dengan memanaskan plastik hingga suhu 500 derajat celcius, maka berubah menjadi gas. Gas yang dihasilkan kemudian dikondensasikan sampai mendapatkan minyak plastik memiliki spesifikasi sifat fisis. Pada saat proses ini membutuhkan waktu 3-4 jam. Mutu BBM berbahan baku plastik ini ternyata luar biasa.
BERITA TERKAIT+
“Setelah melalui pengujian, minyak tersebut setara dengan premium dan solar,” kata Zahrul di Laboratorium Terpadu kampus UAD Yogyakarta. Berdasarkan dari uji kalori, BBM atau minyak plastik ini memiliki kandungan 10 kalori per gramnya. Jika dipirolisis, 20 kilogram (kg) plastik bisa menghasilkan sekitar listrik sebesar 2,5 kilowatt. Sedangkan per kilogram sampah plastik bisa menghasilkan setengah liter minyak. “Jenis plastik yang memungkinkan untuk diubah menjadi BBM di antaranya polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), high destiny polyethylen (HDPE), dan low destiny polyethylene (LDPE),” ujarnya.
Menurut Zahrul, alat untuk proses pirolisis tersebut sudah dilengkapi dengan pengontrol suhu, pengukur tekanan, dan kondensasi bertingkat sehingga didapatkan degradasi hasil yang berbeda. Hasil BBM dengan titik kondensasi lebih rendah memiliki spesifikasi lebih baik jika dibandingkan dengan titik kondensasi yang lebih tinggi. “Meski begitu, masih akan melengkapi dengan katalis untuk dicampurkan dalam reaktor pirolisis. Tujuannya mendapatkan hasil minyak plastik yang lebih baik dengan suhu proses lebih rendah,” ungkapnya. Selain itu, melalui Pusat Studi Energi dan Pengembangan Teknologi Tepat Guna UAD, Zahrur juga akan menciptakan pengelolaan sampah yang baik dari sisi manajemen dan teknologi.
Menurut Zahrul, alat untuk proses pirolisis tersebut sudah dilengkapi dengan pengontrol suhu, pengukur tekanan, dan kondensasi bertingkat sehingga didapatkan degradasi hasil yang berbeda. Hasil BBM dengan titik kondensasi lebih rendah memiliki spesifikasi lebih baik jika dibandingkan dengan titik kondensasi yang lebih tinggi. “Meski begitu, masih akan melengkapi dengan katalis untuk dicampurkan dalam reaktor pirolisis. Tujuannya mendapatkan hasil minyak plastik yang lebih baik dengan suhu proses lebih rendah,” ungkapnya. Selain itu, melalui Pusat Studi Energi dan Pengembangan Teknologi Tepat Guna UAD, Zahrur juga akan menciptakan pengelolaan sampah yang baik dari sisi manajemen dan teknologi.
Baca Juga: Pertama di Indonesia, Legok Nangka Gunakan Pembangkit Listrik Tenaga Sampah
Lebih penting lagi mengubah perilaku masyarakat terhadap sampah plastik dengan mengedepankan reduce, reause, danrecycle (3R). “Alat yang digunakan lebih sederhana dan ramah lingkungan. Untuk membakar sampah menggunakan briket. Mulai sekarang harus mandiri energi, mencari sumber energi alternatif untuk kemajuan dan meningkatkan taraf hidup masyarakat,” ujarnya.
Hasil inovasi Zahrul Mufrodi tersebut sudah diterapkan di Potorono, Banguntapan dan Kweni, Kasihan, Bantul. “Di dua daerah tersebut juga dijadikan pilot project,” kata Humas UAD Yogyakarta Hadi Suyono.
Lebih penting lagi mengubah perilaku masyarakat terhadap sampah plastik dengan mengedepankan reduce, reause, danrecycle (3R). “Alat yang digunakan lebih sederhana dan ramah lingkungan. Untuk membakar sampah menggunakan briket. Mulai sekarang harus mandiri energi, mencari sumber energi alternatif untuk kemajuan dan meningkatkan taraf hidup masyarakat,” ujarnya.
Hasil inovasi Zahrul Mufrodi tersebut sudah diterapkan di Potorono, Banguntapan dan Kweni, Kasihan, Bantul. “Di dua daerah tersebut juga dijadikan pilot project,” kata Humas UAD Yogyakarta Hadi Suyono.
(kmj)
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Bisnis.com, JAKARTA - Sebagai perusahaan petrokimia terbesar di Indonesia, PT Chandra Asri Petrochemical Tbk. akan mendukung komitmen pemerintah untuk mengurangi sampah plastik yang hanyut sampai ke laut hingga 70%.
Upaya itu ditempuh dengan menginisiasi penggunaan sampah kantong plastik dalam campuran aspal dalam lingkungan perusahaan swasta.
Edi Rivai, General Manager Polymer Technical Service and Product Development Chandra Asri, menuturkan penggunaan aspal bercampur plastik merupakan komitmen perusahaan mendukung pembangunan berkelanjutan.
Pada tahap awal, emiten berkode saham TPIA ini akan menggunakan 3 ton sampah kantong plastik untuk melakukan pengaspalan jalan lingkungan perusahaan seluas 6.372 meter persegi.
“Aspal yang dicampur dengan sampah plastik tingkat ketahanan jalan bertambah hingga 30%-40%,” kata Edi di Cilegon, Selasa (3/7/2018).
Melalui inisiatif ini, perseroan berupaya menunjukkan kantong plastik sekali pakai—yang dikhawatirkan menjadi sampah yang mengotori lautan—dapat ditangani dengan baik menjadi produk yang berguna dan memiliki nilai ekonomi.
Dalam pengaspalan itu, setiap 1 ton aspal ditambahkan 50 kilogram sampai 60 kilogram sampah kantong plastik yang sudah dicacah. “Pencampurannya 5%-6%,” katanya.
Erwin Ciputra, Presiden Direktur Chandra Asri, menuturkan perseroan akan mengambil peran dalam pembangunan berkelanjutan serta ikut mengurai permasalahan sampah plastik di Indonesia.
“Pemanfaatan sampah plastik dalam campuran aspal diharapkan dapat menjadi salah satu solusi di Indonesia,” katanya, Selasa (3/7/2018).
Setelah penggunaan plastik sebagai campuran aspal diterapkan dalam pengaspalan jalan lingkungan perseroan, TPIA akan bekerja sama dengan pemerintah untuk menguji efektivitas pencampuran dan kegunaan aspal plastik ini.
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Scientists Have Accidentally Created a Mutant Enzyme That Eats Plastic Waste
This could be a solution to our plastic addiction.
PETER DOCKRILL 17 APR 2018
They found the first ones in Japan. Hidden in the soil at a plastics recycling plant, researchers unearthed a microbe that had evolved to eat the soda bottles dominating its habitat, after you and I throw them away.
That discovery was announced in 2016, and scientists have now gone one better. While examining how the Japanese bug breaks down plastic, they accidentally created a mutant enzyme that outperforms the natural bacteria, and further tweaks could offer a vital solution to humanity's colossal plastics problem.
"Serendipity often plays a significant role in fundamental scientific research and our discovery here is no exception," says structural biologist John McGeehan from the University of Portsmouth in the UK.
"This unanticipated discovery suggests that there is room to further improve these enzymes, moving us closer to a recycling solution for the ever-growing mountain of discarded plastics."
McGeehan's team, including researchers at the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), stumbled onto their mutant tweak while investigating the crystal structure of PETase – the enzyme that helps the Japanese microbe, Ideonella sakaiensis, break down PET plastics (aka polyethylene terephthalate).
PET was patented back in the 1940s, and while that seems like a long time ago, in evolutionary terms it's pretty recent. The point being, while I. sakaiensis can indeed eat plastic, it's only lately had the opportunity to learn this trick, which means it doesn't munch real quick.
That's a problem, given the vast scale of plastic pollution on the planet, with billions of tonnes of discarded waste piling up in landfills and spilling into our oceans, where it even threatens to crowd out fish – seriously.
Not that PETase is a slouch – as PET by itself takes centuries to naturally break down, and the enzyme enables the bacteria to shorten that to just a matter of days.
"After just 96 hours you can see clearly via electron microscopy that the PETase is degrading PET," says NREL structural biologist Bryon Donohoe.
"And this test is using real examples of what is found in the oceans and landfills."
To examine PETase's efficiency at the molecular level, the team used X-rays to generate an ultra-high-resolution 3D model of the enzyme, revealing an unprecedented glimpse of PETase's active site that enables it to grip and break down its PET target – and also, by chance, how that mechanism can be improved.
"Being able to see the inner workings of this biological catalyst provided us with the blueprints to engineer a faster and more efficient enzyme," says McGeehan.
Hypothesising that the PETase enzyme must have evolved in the presence of PET to figure out how to degrade the plastic, the researchers mutated PETase's active site, to see if they could bring it closer to another enzyme, called cutinase.
While they didn't expect it, this adjustment ended up showing the enzyme could still be further optimised in terms of breaking down plastics.
"Surprisingly, we found that the PETase mutant outperforms the wild-type PETase in degrading PET," says NREL materials scientist Nic Rorrer.
"Understanding how PET binds in the PETase catalytic site using computational tools helped illuminate the reasons for this improved performance. Given these results, it's clear that significant potential remains for improving its activity further."
While the mutant PETase is so far only about 20 percent more efficient at breaking down plastic than the naturally occurring enzyme, the team says the important thing is we now know these enzymes can be optimised and augmented.
That means future engineered versions should work even better at munching through plastic, and may be able to help us recycle other kinds of materials too.
For instance, the tweaked PETase is also able to break down a PET substitute called PEF (polyethylene furandicarboxylate), which the natural PETase can't process.
It will take a while before these innovations can be leveraged to break down the billions of tonnes of plastic we've already amassed, but now that we've got a proof of concept, we can use science to give nature a helping hand at breaking down an unnatural material that just won't go away fast enough otherwise.
"What we've learned is that PETase is not yet fully optimised to degrade PET," biotechnologist Gregg Beckham from NREL explains.
"And now that we've shown this, it's time to apply the tools of protein engineering and evolution to continue to improve it."
The findings are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (link down at time of writing).
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This discovery could solve the major problem of environmental pollution. Unwittingly, American and British researchers have devised an enzyme capable of destroying plastic at an accelerated rate.This discovery, explained in a study, published Monday, April 16, 2018, was conducted by teams from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom and by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the US Department of Energy (NREL).
The pollution of the oceans worries scientists. Its impact on the health of humans, animals and the environment is well documented. Each year, more than eight million tons of plastics are found in different oceans of the planet. The majority of these plastics can last for hundreds of years in the waters.
This discovery follows the discovery in 2016 of an enzyme that naturally evolved into a Japanese dump. This enzyme, called PETase, fed on PET plastic, used by millions of tons in the manufacture of plastic bottles in particular.
The initial goal of the British-American team was to understand how the PETase enzyme works, by discovering its structure. Scientists did not expect to improve it by studying it. And yet, by adding amino acids to the structure of the enzyme discovered in Japan, researchers have been able to observe an unexpected change in its behavior. The latter began to break down the plastic faster. The modified enzyme can destroy PET plastic in just a few days. A record time, far from the years, even centuries, that plastic currently takes to destroy itself in the open air.
“Luck is often an important part of basic scientific research, and our discovery is no exception,” said John McGeehan, a professor at the School of Biological Sciences in Portsmouth, “Although the breakthrough is modest, this unexpected discovery suggests that there is room for further improvement of these enzymes, to bring us even closer to a recycling solution for this ever-growing body of plastic that no one seems to consider as important,” he added.
Scientists are now working to improve the performance of the mutant enzyme, hoping to one day use it in an industrial process of destruction of plastics.
“It is quite possible that in the coming years we will see an industrially viable process to recycle PET and potentially others (plastics) into their original components so that they can be recycled in a sustainable way,” said Professor John McGeehan.
This discovery is all the more important as the use of enzyme in plastic recycling would be a natural solution. “The enzymes are non-toxic, biodegradable and can be produced in large quantities by microorganisms,” said Oliver Jones, a chemistry expert at the University of Melbourne.
As a conclusion to the study, Professor John McGeehan said, “We can all play a big role in the plastic problem. But the scientific community that created these “miracle materials” (plastics) must now use all the technologies available to them to develop real solutions”.
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SEA Globe: The next time an Indonesian junk food lover sinks his or her teeth into a burger, they might think twice about throwing away the plastic wrapper. After all, if it was produced by Evoware, there’s a reasonable chance the wrapper is more nutritious than the burger itself.
Using seaweed as a raw material, the Indonesian startup has created a plastic wrap that it says is entirely environmentally friendly – and edible.
“Plastics are contaminating everything – our air, our food and even our water. Recent studies [by Orb Media] said that drinking water [in Jakarta] is 76% contaminated by microplastics,” says Evoware co-founder David Christian.
Plastic is a particularly big problem in Indonesia, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Science, which found that the archipelagic nation is the world’s second-worst culprit, behind only China, in terms of contributing plastic waste to the ocean.
Evoware’s seaweed-based packaging dissolves in warm water, creating zero waste, and is almost completely odourless and tasteless. “Basically it’s not plastic, because we don’t use any petroleum-based [products] or plastics in it. It’s edible because it’s 100% made from seaweed,” Christian says.
The material is aimed at becoming the go-to for small sachets such as one-cup coffee packets and the seasoning packets found in instant noodles, which are currently difficult to recycle due to the presence of numerous materials that are tricky to separate. Single-use packaging for takeaway foods such as burgers and sandwiches are also a target.
Given Indonesia’s status along with China as “by far the largest seaweed producers” in the world, according to an article in the European Journal of Phycology, Evoware’s products have the potential for a second social impact. In 2014, the two countries each farmed more than 10m tonnes of seaweed, creating a vast oversupply for Indonesia that Christian hopes his company can help make a dent in – improving the livelihoods of farmers in the process.
“Maybe our products will be more expensive [than conventional plastics], even when we do mass production… because we still want to help the farmers,” he says. “We want a fair price. We don’t want to push the seaweed farmers so that they are selling us really cheap seaweed.”
The team only launched their edible packaging at the end of September, but they are already struggling to meet the high demand, particularly from outside of Indonesia, according to Christian. They are now focusing on building a bigger production facility and developing the versatility of the product beyond food and beverage packaging.
“The reaction has been great,” says Christian. “Right now we are still very new… We are hopeful. We want to replace plastics, but we need to do it [little by little], I think. That’s the long-term goal.”
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BBC: Sebuah bisnis rintisan berusaha mendekatkan krisis sampah plastik yang menggunung dengan jalan keluar. Mereka mengenalkan pengganti kemasan plastik yang larut saat diseduh, dapat terurai dengan mudah — bahkan aman untuk dimakan.''Bahannya rumput laut. Kaya serat dan tidak perlu dipupuk,'' ujar David Christian dari Evoware.
Selesai digunakan, kemasan 100% dari rumput laut itu juga boleh Anda telan atau limbahnya menjadi pupuk bagi lingkungan sekitar.
Jika proses yang dilalui kemasan plastik butuh waktu hingga ribuan tahun, revolusi kemasan yang digagas oleh David, seorang lulusan sekolah bisnis, bisa memangkas daur hidupnya menjadi dua tahun saja.
Mirip dengan plastik, kata David, kemasan dari rumput laut ini juga cukup fleksibel diubah menjadi bermacam kemasan serta mudah terurai saat diseduh air panas. ''Sudah memperoleh sertifikat halal, aman dimakan, dan diproduksi sesuai standar HACCP.''
Standar HACCP berdasarkan definisi dari Organisasi Kesehatan Dunia (WHO) merupakan pendekatan atau pedoman untuk kebersihan dan keamanan bahan pangan.
Walaupun baru diproduksi dengan skala rumah tangga, kemasan pengganti plastik yang brilian ini kini dilirik perusahaan besar seperti produsen mi instan, waralaba burger, dua perusahaan komestik besar asal Inggris, dan sebuah perusahaan kebutuhan rumah tangga internasional. Pencapaian langka buat produk dengan misi ramah lingkungan.
Tak cukup kesadaran lingkungan
Pengamat bisnis lingkungan, Agus Sari, mengatakan bahwa produk yang menawarkan solusi terhadap problem sampah plastik semacam ini selalu segar.
''Saya sendiri termasuk yang sangat tertarik dan model seperti ini memang harus dilahirkan,'' kata dia.
Sebab sampai saat ini, imbuh Agus, persoalan sampah plastik di tanah air sudah begitu merepotkan.
Jika pada akhirnya pemerintah akan keluar uang untuk menanggulangi masalah sampah yang luar biasa tersebut, ''kenapa tidak keluar uang untuk pencegahan, dan bukan penanggulangan?''
Untuk bisa bersaing di pasar, produk semacam ini menurutnya akan lekas gugur jika cuma menawarkan solusi.
''Buat pasar, solusi itu urusan secondary. Yang primer, seberapa murah?'' ujar Agus.
''Hanya mengedepankan environmental awareness saja tidak akan cukup untuk jualan.'' Sebab, kata Agus, kalau harganya terlalu mahal untuk produksi massal maka produsen tetap akan membeli kemasan plastik, karena mereka tidak mau menambah biaya.
''Ini kan bukan produk yang tidak ada di pasar, tapi mengganti yang sudah ada di pasar.''
Dan, hadirnya Evoware dengan bungkus kemasan rumput laut sesungguhnya bisa berperan besar menjawab tantangan teknologi untuk beralih ke kemasan bukan plastik. Tapi, kata Agus, lagi-lagi harganya harus ditekan supaya sebanding dan bisa digunakan sebagai pengganti dan pas untuk skala ekonomi.
''Supaya mereka bisa berperan lebih banyak, satu, harus ada insentif pajak supaya harga bisa bersaing. Kedua, perlu ada regulasi, sekalian saja larang plastik diedarkan.''
Selama ini, imbuh Agus, pemerintah masih belum serius menangani persoalan sampah plastik di tanah air. Padahal, masalah sampah kita sudah luar biasa.
Apakah proyek revolusioner ini dapat menyelamatkan lingkungan?
Jika ketahuan pakai kantong plastik, warga Kenya bakal dipenjara empat tahun
Pemerintah Indonesia menargetkan akan kurangi sampah plastik di laut sampai 70% selama delapan tahun mendatang dan mengatakan telah membuat tahapannya.
Menurut peneliti dari Universitas Georgia Dr. Jenna Jambeck - yang dimuat dalam Jurnal Science (sciencema.org) 12 Februari 2015 - Indonesia membuang limbah plastik sebanyak 3,2 juta ton, dan berada di urutan kedua sebagai negara penyumbang sampah plastik ke laut setelah Cina.
Sampah plastik yang mengalir ke laut itu kemudian dimakan oleh hewan laut, terutama penyu.
Food Republic: What if you could eat the packaging off your food instead of sending it to 1,000 years of landfill doom? Indonesian startup company Evoware has developed just the thing.
Using seaweed, Evoware created a packaging wrap that is edible, biodegradable and dissolvable by hot water, according to Fast Company. Plus, it’s good for you! Seaweed is high in fiber and packed with vitamins. It is also naturally halal, an important and appealing factor for Muslims, who make up a majority of Indonesia’s population.
Evoware plans to make dissolvable packages of instant coffee, sugar and seasonings in instant noodles. Instead of opening tiny plastic packets and tossing them in the trash, these packets will disintegrate as boiling water is poured on top.
As we discussed last week in the case of kelp jerky, seaweed absorbs a great deal of the carbon dioxide in the sea, making it a great crop to grow. Not only is the startup focused on eco-friendliness, the increase in demand will help seaweed farmers raise more revenue.
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WIRED:
Researchers have discovered that a caterpillar usually bred for use as fishing bait is capable of biodegrading plastic shopping bags made from polyethylene.
The wax worm, which is the larvae of the great wax moth, is well known as a pest to beekeepers. Wax moths lay eggs inside hives which then hatch into wax worms living as parasites on the beeswax.
Now, their plastic-busting capabilities have been discovered, by chance, when a researcher from the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria (CSIC) in Spain (who coincidentally is an amateur beekeeper), was removing the parasites from honeycombs in her hives.
"I removed the worms, and put them in a plastic bag while I cleaned the panels," explained CSIC's Federica Bertocchini. "After finishing, I went back to the room where I had left the worms and I found they were everywhere. They had escaped from the bag even though it had been closed and when I checked, I saw the bag was full of holes. There was only one explanation: the worms had made the holes and escaped. This project began there and then".
In a study carried out in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, around 100 wax worms were exposed to a bag from a UK supermarket. After 40 minutes, holes had started to appear and after 12 hours, there was a 92g reduction in the mass of plastic from the bag. This degradation rate is extremely fast, say the researchers, giving the example of a bacteria that was reported last year to biodegrade some plastics at a rate of just 0.13g a day.
"If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, its reproduction on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be achievable," said Cambridge's Paolo Bombelli, first author of the study published in the journal Current Biology.
"This discovery could be an important tool for helping to get rid of the polyethylene plastic waste accumulated in landfill sites and oceans."
Wax worm
Close-up of a wax worm next to biodegraded holes in a polyethylene plastic shopping bag from a UK supermarket as used in the experiment
To confirm the plastic wasn't just being chomped on by the worms, and that they were actually breaking down polymer chains in the plastic, the researchers mashed up some of the worms and smeared them on polyethylene bags. The test gave them similar results to the one with the live worms.
The scientists believe the worms' mysterious plastic-degrading skills are likely related to the way in which they digest beeswax. They speculate that digesting beeswax and polyethylene involves breaking similar types of chemical bonds.
"Wax is a polymer, a sort of 'natural plastic,' and has a chemical structure not dissimilar to polyethylene," said CSIC's Federica Bertocchini, the study's lead author. "The caterpillar produces something that breaks the chemical bond, perhaps in its salivary glands or a symbiotic bacteria in its gut. The next steps for us will be to try and identify the molecular processes in this reaction and see if we can isolate the enzyme responsible".
The research could lead to a large-scale method of breaking down plastic waste that finds its way into rivers and oceans, endangering wildlife. Low-density polyethylene plastic bags take around 100 years to decompose completely, while the toughest plastic bags can take even longer.
In October 2015, a 5p charge was introduced in the UK in an attempt to dramatically reduce plastic bag use and encourage shoppers to carry reusable bags. The charge applies at all retailers with more than 250 employees, with supermarkets being the main target.
In the six months after the charge was introduced, the number of bags given out was estimated to have dropped by around 83 per cent.
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IBM has accidentally discovered an entirely new class of thermosetting polymer that is lightweight, stronger than bone, 100 percent recyclable and can self-heal. Today, most of the widely used polymers that are strong and lightweight tend not to be recyclable. These experimental polymers could be cheaper, lighter and decrease waste in landfills.
Researcher Jeannette Garcia had been working on another type of polymer when the solution in her flask suddenly and unexpectedly hardened -- she had forgotten to add a reagent to the mix of chemicals. When the milk material hardened into a chunk, gluing her stirring bar into place, she tried to grind it with a pestle and mortar before hitting it with a hammer, but the chunk would not smash. "It was one of those serendipitous discoveries," Garcia told
Popular Mechanics.
Garcia wasn't entirely sure how the new polymer had been created and so worked with IBM's computational chemistry team -- led by James Hedrick -- to work back to the mechanism that caused the reaction.
The new type of polymer is called polyhexahydrotriazine, or PHT.
It is formed when there's a reaction between paraformaldehyde and something called 4,4-ocydianiline (ODA), both of which are used in polymer production already, meaning it could be put into production relatively easily and could have applications in aerospace, transportation (if reinforced with carbon fillers) and semiconductor industries.
A second closely related polymer was also discovered, but this one was self-healing, elastic and gooey. This material was also light and recyclable and works as a very strong adhesive -- it may also have applications in the slow-release of drugs.
In 2012, IBM Research chemists revealed they were working to create "ninja polymers" that could target MRSA-infected cells in the human body and destroy their harmful payload with the aim of creating antibiotic free bacteria killers.
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This article was taken from the April 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Recycled plastic could soon be on the menu, thanks to this culinary creation.
The Funghi Mutarium, developed by Austrian design group Livin Studio, uses mushroom roots, or mycelium, to digest thin sheets of plastic such as polythene -- making them edible for humans.
The plastic is first sterilised in a UV-light chamber, then placed in an agar jelly pod (called an FU) about the size of a tennis ball. Using a pipette, a sample of mycelium suspended in a sugar solution is drawn from the "nursery" bowl (below, left), and introduced to the agar pod. This pod is placed in the second dome, an incubator kept at 25°C. The agar, a seaweed-based gel, feeds the fungi and encourages it to spread. "We [time-lapse] filmed one of the agar shapes and the fungi was able to colonise the plastic in a couple of days," says designer and Livin founder Katharina Unger, 24. "But it still takes a long time to fully digest the plastic."
Once digestion is complete, though, you can eat the whole thing -- agar ball and all. And the taste? "Unusual," says Unger. "It's pretty neutral, but you can add to it. We made a dessert with chocolate."
The studio is now working with Utrecht University to ensure the pods meet food-gradestandards, and to optimise the digestion process. Shopping-bag starter, anyone?
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the GUARDIAN: Who hasn’t occasionally considered whether you could just chomp on your water bottle once you have finished drinking from it? That is a reality with Ooho water pouches – from Skipping Rocks Lab, a UK-based “sustainable packaging” startup – made from seaweed for an esoteric post-beverage snack.
Of course, eating them is not really the point – the reason they received the thumbs up from French president Emmanuel Macron in December is that they offer a glimpse of a plastic-free future. With the tide turning against plastics and everyone from David Attenborough to the Queen seeking bans, these containers could help save the oceans. Ooho pouches encase a serving of water in a thin membrane made from brown algae. They were developed in London by Pierre-Yves Paslier and Rodrigo García González, who claim seaweed is safe to eat and regrows quickly, too.
“Ooho’s edible capsule and [another UK-made product] Herald’s edible straw have both been pitched as potential alternatives to plastic,” says Philip Chadwick, editor of Packaging News. “The ongoing plastics debate could mean that more edible packs will be developed.”
Plastic, it seems, could soon be past it. An all-out assault on human-made materials is under way. Alongside the UK government’s recently announced plan for a deposit scheme for bottles in the lead-up to eradicating disposable plastics by 2042, the Co-op and Starbucks are using recycled plastics in their bottles, while Selfridges will no longer sell drinks in plastic bottles. The National Trust is replacing plastic plant pots and trays.
Indonesia’s Evoware launched seaweed packaging in September that can wrap a burger or noodles. In New York, Loliware has come up with a cup you can eat, made from agar seaweed, and is working on an edible seaweed straw. Herald’s edible straw is made in Barking. It is a sweet proposition, made from sugar, corn starch and jelly, and lasts 40 minutes inside a mojito before it starts to fall apart. Meanwhile, in Hyderabad, Narayana Peesapaty designed an edible spoon made of millet flour that becomes a proxy dessert after dusting off a bowl of dahl. In Poland, there are Biotrem’s wheatbran plates you can scoff. Soon perhaps everything on the table could be eaten (maybe even the table, too). The questions is: will we want to?
“How comfortable will consumers be with eating packaging?” asks Chadwick. “Will it taste good? Would anyone want to eat packaging that has been handled by other shoppers?”
It is certainly a bold leap on from the last crop of hi-tech food fads – from Quorn and bleeding fake-meat burgers to insects and molecular gastronomy.
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1. Company name - EnviGreen Biotech India Pvt Ltd
2. Founder name - Ashwath Hegde
3. City it is based out of - Bangalore
4. Headcount/Strength of the team - 90 plus
5. Industry - Environmental health
6. Investors & Amount raised - Self funded (Rs 30 crore)
The quest to plug the proliferation of plastic has inspired a coterie of entrepreneurs to look f ..
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All inclusive
According to the 25-year-old, global demand for bioplastic packaging is forecast to reach 8,84,000 tons by 2020.
"Biodegradable bags have taken up nearly 10-15% of the total plastics market in the world today and is poised to increase to 25-30% by 2020," he says.
Although marginally costlier than plastic bags, EG bags are not only eco-friendly and durable, but also engage a community known to labour hard against adversities.
"W ..
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The startup has manufacturing partners appointed across India and a dedicated unit running in Karnataka with the current rate of production at 200 metric tonnes a month. The EG R&D team is also working on a version that can carry more than 10 kg of weight including liquid items. //economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/62047336.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
"We are currently looking at mass sale in four states - Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh," says Hegde.
Although Hegde wanted to become a lawyer growing up, he now dreams of seei ..
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