Nowadays, the problem of plastic recycling is becoming a major ecological issue. More and more people are aware of the importance of recycling waste plastics. Researchers are looking for ways to reuse existing plastics to reduce material waste or find more environmentally friendly alternatives. Taste. Not long ago, a team developing new materials led by researchers at Cornell University solved a problem that seriously hinders the recycling of plastics. Jeffrey Coates, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University, often takes up the issue of plastic recycling, noting that only 2% of plastic is currently recycled. This means that nearly one-third of waste plastic enters the ecological environment, 14% is used for incineration or energy recovery, and 40% of plastic is treated as waste in landfill.
These dismal data on plastic recycling inspired Coates to seek better ways to recycle plastic. In one of them, through a collaboration with the University of Minnesota, researchers have developed a multi-block polymer that, when added to two mixtures of plastics, can create a new type of mechanically tough polymer that can solve existing problems. thing. The problem that has plagued plastic recycling for many years is that polyethylene and polypropylene, which make up two-thirds of the world's plastic, have different chemical structures, and because there is no technology to fuse the two together, they cannot be recycled after recycling. Use it again.
What Minnesota's team at Cornell has accomplished could change that. When small amounts of the composition-generated tetra-block or tetra-block polymers were incorporated into alternating polyethylene and polypropylene segments, the resulting materials had strengths superior to those of the di-block or di-block polymers they tested . The result, they say, is something that many researchers have tried for years without success. To test the material, the team welded two plastic strips together using different multi-block polymers as adhesives and then mechanically separated them. Welds made with di-block polymers failed relatively quickly, but those made with tetra-block additives held up well enough that the plastic strips did not crack.
The researchers said that they had achieved similar results before, and usually they would use 10% soft materials, so the results did not have typical plastic properties, and the performance was usually not as good as the original.
He said: "It's exciting that we can use as little as 1% additives and get a plastic alloy that really has super properties." According to the team, in addition to obtaining new recycled plastics from existing plastics In addition, new polymers can also lead to the development of entirely new mechanical strength polymers. This would allow less plastic material to be used for typical objects and containers, creating more suitable solutions, the researchers say.