How to recycle the unrecyclable
Вставка
- Опубліковано 16 тра 2024
- The global plastic problem is getting even bigger, but there might be a solution to battle it that has been around for decades: chemical recycling. But do technological improvements make it recycle the unrecyclable? Is this the silver bullet we've all been looking for?
Reporter: Kai Steinecke
Camera: Henning Goll
Video editor: David Jacobi
Supervising editors: Joanna Gottschalk & Kiyo Dörrer
We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our channel explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world - and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
#PlanetA #ChemicalRecycling #Pyrolysis
Read more:
Types and techniques of chemical recycling:
chemtrust.org/wp-content/uplo...
Plastic recycling in Europe (industry numbers):
plasticseurope.org/wp-content...
Technological assessment of chemical recycling:
www.umsicht-suro.fraunhofer.d...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:38 First steps
01:48 Process explained
04:05 Environmental concerns
07:03 Application
08:51 Conclusion
Our first goal obviously needs to be to reduce plastic usage, but as someone with a degree in plastics engineering I still think this is important.
This video covered most of the stuff but I’d like to add a few reasons:
- Degradation. When plastic is mechanically recycled the polymer chains are shortened which leads to mechanical properties being reduced. As a result, companies really want to limit how much mechanically recycled plastic they use otherwise customers might not like the quality.
- Profitability. As the polymer chains are shortened and the properties are reduced, the processing takes a hit. This means that companies have to employ more engineers in order to constantly dial the processes back in and an engineer costs a lot more than a normal shop floor employee.
We gotta get rid of single use plastics immediately, but there’s some plastic uses which simply will never go away. For those, we need chemical recycling.
I just bought some noodles from the corner market with like 5 layers of plastic packaging for a handful of noodles.
I think someone is going to end up modifying and breeding plastic eating micro organisms that have popped up at sea for this purpose. Ideally just bioreactors powered by sunlight
@@Fallen7Pie that's true but also dangerous.
It will happen at any point but let's imagine what happens to products that are still in use. They would be attacked.
@@BlueFlash215 Oh yes it's gonna be a serious problem. Especially if evolution beats humans to the punch or certain humans figure out we use plastics in overly critical roles
Can't agree with how you worded that last statement. Single-use plastics are INVALUABLE in medical procedures. Yup, we're talking syringes, IVs, bandages of all kinds; the adhesive n band-aids is usually made out of isoprene, which is also a polymer. Tubing for catheters of all kinds is also plastic, because we need something non-degradable that wouldn't break down in a human body, and hypo-allergic.
Chemist here. Recycling plastics is extremely tedious. There are so many different types and the same plastic might have a huge variety of additives in it. They are chemical resistant, and the starting material is really cheap.
Props to these guys, they are doing a great job!
Wouldn't it be smarter for recyclability reasons to only allow a certain amount of plastics and additives, which also have to be labeled on the product?
If you were able to chemically cut the carbon chains to small enough parts you could in theory make the same substance out of any carbon-based plastics..
@@whiteraven550 yes exactly, it would be much better.
I think that in Japan they are doing something like you said.
@@rkan2 you can but you have to put energy into it and the starting materials is very cheap (gas/oil)
@@giovannipelissero1886 Exactly
This channel always opens my eyes larger. Thank you for this video.
Wider☺️
May I point out a few issues?
1) Pyrolysis is just one of the techniques in development for the chemical recycling, it's not the only. It's the best solution right know and in the meantime we can use it.
2) With the pyrolysis oil we can get rid of fossils switching entirely on the bio-based plastic + pyro oil (not talking about bio-degradable, but bio-based that's different).
3) We are talking about 50% of the recycled plastic that goes to landfill or incineration: I personally don't care if right know pyrolysis it's not the best solution as long as it works. Then when other technologies come to fruition we can toss pyrolysis. It's absurd saying "we don't use it because it's not good", even if it's better than incineration.
4) It's actually good that using pyro oil the plastic it's going to cost more, because right know we use plastic even if it's not the best solution for our purpose only because it's cheap. Thus the plastic will be used wisely and it will be reduced.
As an engineer operating in the recycling business since 1994, I have many issues on "chemical recycling" of tyres. Better to mix tyre granulate with tar and pave roads, or mix it with concrete to obtain insulating bricks... better to focus on reuse than on energy-intense elimination.
Hm, won‘t reusing the "rubber" as road surface release a lot microplastics? And rubber is not a brilliant thermal insulator unless the material is made into some sort of fire resistant foam (on par with glass wool or rock wool).
In india they claim to make "clean" fuel of it🤣😂
If you mix the rubber in the wearing-surface-layer of the pavement, the pavement will release much more particals during it's lifetime (microplastic, black carbon). Mixing to the binder or intermediate layer is no problem.
For thermal insulation you always have to use good insulating materials, or else you need too much space and material to achieve the same insulation value.
"energy-intense elimination" - did you watch the video ? The whole operation is self-sustaining, they even generate excess energy.
@@scratchy996 I watched the video.... but the reality is different, otherwise everybody would burn tires!
Do you think we should be using more chemical recycling?
As an environmental chemist, wish i had this channel created while i was in university. Its as educative as it is entertaining.
This is well made journalism. Most channels end where you dug deeper and consulted experts in the field.
The main issue with plastic recycling in my opinion is that producing plastic from fossil fuel is much cheaper than processing old plastic.
Perhaps a tax should be added to plastic depending on the percentage of recycled plastic it contains.
Super good video, thank you! I've been struggling to get my head around chemical recycling for quite a while. Your video really helped me to get a good overview of what it is and what it is used for.
I’ve always thought about this concept, intriguing that people are feasibly looking into it
It's a simple thing, but thank you for the reminders to turn on subtitles. German and English share a lot of sounds, so whenever the transition happens, my first assumption is that my brain has finally decided to fail me. And then I get a sigh of relief when I see the subtitle reminder.
This was one of the best materials I saw about chemical recycling on the internet. It's clear, concise and the didactic is perfect. Actually, it's so amazing that I used it as a quote in one of my college articles about recycling. Thanks a lot for making such good content!
Hi Pedro, thank you for your feedback! We are glad to know this was helpful to you. 🌱
3:38 : Self-sufficient doesn't mean circular. I think entropy will take very strong objection on that point.
Very well explained. It clarifies pretty well that the quality of the feedstock is the key to the success of whatever chemical recycling process/technology. It works for tyres because tyres are tyres (homogeneous feedstock) while household plastic waste is the most heterogeneous waste stream. Well done!
I'm a chemist and i must say that reeking a bottle with organic chemicals takes away any believability that you're report has. It's reckless, we can recycle almost any chemical but as always it is about the price that's the reason we don't do it.
Thank you for the key stats! Can you share cross approach study that shows the incineration vs pyrolysis stats?
oh my god ive been thinking about radioactive waste recycling for years now. damn i really love this channel
Really great video. Loved it. More please
Please make a video about enzymatic recycling as well
Thanks for the pointer, we'll have a look into the topic!
A normal private "burn pit" / "burn barrel" fire is fine for wood and paper waste, but is too cold to safely burn plastics. A backyard fire cannot break benzene rings (a primary component of styrene / styrofoam) so these toxic molecules are freed from burning away everything else, and will vaporize into the sky or stay in the ash unbroken, and then wash away with rain and poisons the environment. This is why burning of plastic waste in a backyard is hazardous. The combustion temperature needs to be extremely high to break tough chemical bonds used in plastics.
A large scale municipal incinerator needs to have supplemental oil, gas, or electric heating to push the temperature high enough to actually decompose benzene. But then this also causes normally nonreactive nitrogen gas in the supply air to also decompose, and when the combusted gases cool the loose nitrogen atoms reform into smog producing nitrogen oxides. So now you also need catalytic reduction of the waste gas to remove the smog oxides that were accidentally created.
So proper clean incineration of plastics for heating or electricity production has its own high costs, beyond simply being able to burn fossil fuels to do the same thing.
good job guys, keep going on
great video! it seems like every new technology and process has its downfalls.... but i'm glad to learn about all the innovation going on!
As someone who has been in the recycling industry for over 30 years, I can say there is another way to utilize the PCR MIXED plastics.. My suggestion is that companies stop making pallets with wood, new or used, and use the PCR Mixed plastic waste that otherwise goes into the landfills today. I have done so and have examples for proof. The pallets are almost unbreakable, can be infinitely recycled, and while the PCR is not going away, we have created products (many more potential products than just pallets) that can and will be very price competitive. I am new to this type of communication, but I am sure that UTUBE has a way you can reach me. OH, and yes, we do need to reduce the usage of plastic materials but this is a GREAT way until a better solution is found.
I think governments just need to start taxing virgin crude and virgin plastic much higher to disincentivize its use over recycled material.
What they fail to disclose is that mechanical recycling of plastics is limited by the quality of the waste stream. Most of the collected plastic is unusable, it is too contaminated, it isn't homogeneous and it is mixed with other plastics. Plus you have to deal with additives when processing the same plastic feed stream, all of this will mean that getting a consistent product out of recovered plastics won't be easy. This will limit the applications and limit the products that can be made. Also plastics will degrade each time they are remelted and processed. And trying to comingle several types of plastics for recycling a thing that as been pushed by the german recycling association isn't the solution.
Besides pyrolysis, the only other way of chemical recycling is using organic solvents and that is probably much worse. Since maintaining containment of solvent gases and keeping all the operations in a closed loop to avoid leaking dangerous chemicals isn't an easy or cheap.
Plastic is just a flawed, toxic material and no one wants to admit it.
do you think one could capture the gases for industrial microbial gas fermentation
At 6:00 Pyrum's CEO addresses most of this point
Already a company out there that solves this problem to advanced bio-oil and also visible on the blockchain! 👌
Even if cost 4 times more money, cost is not the issue here, issue is saving nature and get rid of these pollution. Every Govt should spend money more in these facilities instead of buying weapons for war.
*turn on subs
Me, who understands German: I don't have such weaknesses
As others have pointed out, pyrolysis is only one method of chemical recycling, albeit the best currently. It would have been neat to see a small section at the end looking forward. Particularly, I believe, is enzymatic digestion of plastics. Just google it and do your own research, but enzymes have been discovered to break down specifically targeted plastics (polymers) into their base building blocks (monomers). These can be used to recreate virgin plastics. The best part is that because the enzymes are targeted, sorting is not required of the waste. You can subject anything to PETase and it should only degrade PET. Then move on to next enzyme bath. It is definitely not happening yet, we have only discovered these enzymes in the last decade, most in the last few years, and we still do not have enzymes for most plastics (there are so many). But it is a beacon of possibility for a difficult problem.
Anyway, great video
isnt this a VERY slow process?
We are going to do this is in Omaha, Nebraska.
Amazing
If the pyrolysis oil is similar to crude, can't it be refined in the same way? It requires a lot more energy (which can be helped with methane capture) but we have the infrastructure for it
It's funny that you end the video saying we need to avoid unrecyclable plastics (I agree), while you showed just before that the result of the recycling process ends up being styrofoam (unrecyclable).
Why should it be unrecyclable? I couldn't find any reason for that online.
0:50
Where do you get this number from? Does burning counts as recycling for this figure as it is claiming the energy of it?
Why is it different at the end of the video where you say 35% instead of the previously mentioned 99%?
Seems good, although these chemicals might be needed to be stronger.
Although it would be harder because producing the chemical to break down all the compounds from plastic.
This was informative. Would artificial intelligence and robotics make a big difference in mechanical recycling by lowering sorting costs at MRF's for instance. I know of AMP Robotics. The idea is that it reduces labor costs and gets it closer to virgin material costs for merchants to buy.
Both are being researched right now. Every sorting facility wants to eliminate the humans in its process, since it's not a pleasant job and therefore there is already a shortage of them. Now the robot has to be able to both recognize all incoming particles and reliably remove them from the stream. The sensors for recognition work very well, but the robotic in charge of performing a human hand grabbing the object, seems to be the challenge at the moment. I've seen some prototypes and they really struggled with the mentioned broad spectrum of objects in post-consumer plastics. Now regarding AI there is research going on measuring the impact of controlling the incoming stream to the total sorting result. This seems to be the case but there will be a need for more studies.
@@marctrijox9621 thanks for the insight. I'm not an expert, just a fed up consumer of Republic Services in Chicago. Do you think mechanical recycling combined with a later stage chemical recycling facility, that's located nearby, makes a noteworthy net positive impact?
There was another technology related to this that used specific waves of microwave to break plastics back down into hydrocarbons. Made a few news articles and disappeared, half suspecting it got bought out and buried.
I think concepts like this do more damage than good. We have a plastic addiction that we desperately need to break. I appreciate that enterprises such as this are trying to do good work, but this is just going to draw out plastic dependency, which is not something we can afford to do from a health and environmental perspective.
We need to adress the recyclability issue as well as consumption, sure not using something is more ecological than doing so but that's not always an option. Therefore we need to develop ways to deal with unrecyclable waste. Another intermediate solution would be to standardise and regulate the polymers and additives in plastics to something that is easier to breakdown, sort and reuse, I don't think we need milions of variants of thousands of plastics we curently toss into the same bin despite ther incompatibility
Love this
The phrase “chemical recycling”… I’m suddenly reminded of Times Beach
I support what you guys are doing keep it up
We talk about recycling a lot, and the videos are about recycling mostly. But in your narrative you correctly state the list by order of importance 1. Reduce, 2. Reuse, 3. Recycle, so what about reducing the need for tyres & consumer plastic products?
🌎 Blessings ♻️
Do what the coal plants and iron smelters do. Because they can not guarantee the consistency of the coal they buy, they blend various coals into one homogeneous mixture. It’s a way to standardize and bring predictability to an otherwise unpredictable supply of feedstock
"The hottest thing I've ever stood next to"
Car engine: am I a joke to you?
The solution is NOT one vs another, rather a combination of different recycling facilities.
For the same reason a car is not a bus and a bus is not a train though they all transport us, but we have all, not just tediously analyzing which one is better meanwhile doing very little. Time is ticking.
Good vid, research well done, what are the alternatives, a small vid 3 mins, and the next generation would no doubt, be inspired. The safe consumer code 123.😉
Feedback for editors: Please add the *turn on subs _before_ the viewer needs them. So some 5 seconds earlier than at 3:09.
Most plastic in all shapes and kinds are not always design for recycling. With the current consumption and disposal rate of plastic packagings worldwide, the most cost and time effective way is, still, burning as alternative fuel or produce electricity.
"anything is basically better than incineration"
Landfills: *I'll pretend I didn't hear that*
In Germany most landfills are closed. Only problematic waste and demolition rubble gets into landfills. We even import waste for those "MVA"s (incineration plants). But whom I'am telling it by that german user name?
Hey Akshay,
I am working on a ocean bound plastic renewal recycling startup in mumbai , india, would love to connect with people working on similar projects and similar startups and companies
I'm working on research using enzymes to degrade plastic. This video makes me think, however, that this may not be a great idea as then plants that create plastic are needing more materials for this. What do you think?
40 seconds in, my first question is if they can break it down into plastics, can they further break those down into their base components and un-plastic them? Like, I don't know the principle of how plastic is formed, but I know that some are made of cellulose and can break back down into that as a result (Cellophane plastics). I look forward to seeing if I have my question answered in this video and will edit this comment if I do.
Not really
Yall need to talk about Ecosia they are a search engine that plants tress
Yea I’d love to see DW dig into their business model and say what does and doesn’t work!
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet
They did a General documentary about them called Rethinking Capitalism .I just thought it would be good to talk about them on one if there smaller channels as well.
Couldn't some of these products be pumped back into the earth in a similar fashion to the CarbFix project in Iceland? In the case of CO2, if it's not pumped into the right deposits, it escapes. But with something solid at a higher temperature/lower pressure, we could pump it anywhere and be confident that it would stay put.
In Deutschland ist es seit 2005 verboten, unbehandelte Abfälle auf einer Deponie abzulagern.
Alle Abfälle müssen behandelt (z. B. thermische Behandlung durch Verbrennung.) werden.
Auf diese Weise landet kaum noch Plastik Fall auf einer Deponie.
Hi, take the liberty to ask, how much does it cost to make a video like this episode? Thank you.
Recycled rubber is used for many things, not just race tracks but many kids parks have soft flooring because of it.
Definitely true, but I’ve heard similar issues of “we’re running out of playgrounds to rubberized.”
Also, I hear designers are starting to go away from that technique anyways cause it seems to give the kids a sense of invulnerability so they fall from higher and get hurt even worse than if it wasn’t there.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet people come up with silly arguments for everything they usually don't stand up well.
Having a soft place under play equipment is a good idea, people use gym mats for a reason. Kids will still learn what it is like to fall.
I agree it could be good to recycle them in more ways but not at the expense of more polution.
I don't see why everyone is so opposed to landfil all of a sudden, there's plenty of giant holes that can be filled and buried over and trees planted on top.
Hey that's in my home town :D
Is there a german version of this?
I mean sure, you can, but what are the energetic costs of producing and disposing the chemical products involved? Nevermind the whole recycling process.
Can i ask something? Can you make a video on How is poisonous gas and dust produced from plastic burning is purified before it is released into the environment. Or if you have already made a video on it, could you please share it..?
We haven't yet, thanks for the suggestion and we will look into it :)
@@DWPlanetA Omg Tysm!! 👀
Longest joke gag in Simpsons is Springfield tie yard burns from 1988 till now.
I think this area needs lots of exploration.
2:42
700 degrees celcius is the hottest he has ever stood next to?
So he has never used a Bunsen-burner, or fire with a oxygen draft, like a stove of so...
But not at that scale/volume/surface area. You know radiation of any kind gets reduced by the square to distance.
@@wernerhiemer406 fair point.
Which company doing chemicals recycle in india
Where is the focus on refurbishing, reclaiming, repurposing, rebuilding, and downpurposing of consumer items, old building hardware, and business equipment so it stops going into landfills?
That will save way, way more than all of these combined.
Are those plastic waste percentage correct numbers? Why there seemed to be a lot of europe plastic garbage dumped to china, philippines, malaysia, and indonesia?
Damn all these tires could be used to build Earthships...
Are plastic companies collaborating with recycling plants to make their products easier to recycle? Because if not, I think that should be something they do.
And maybe encouraging people to put a bit more effort in separating and organizing their plastic waste.
I miss the explanation that a tyre is made of many different elastomeric components.
Companies care more about profits then what they do to the world... If people will be educated better will be less population and pollution in the world... just an opinion... keep the good work
How is it possible that pyrolysis makes more energy than goes into it? Pretty sure that breaks a lot of thermodynamics doesn't it?
It isn't and I didn't notice, that they claimed it would be. Parts of the products of the reaction are burnt to keep it going. So the end product has less theoretical energy than the original tires but is pure raw material better suited for a new use than the would be mechanical recycled tires.
@@Aaron_We I see. I'm just surprised it can be self-sustaining. Usually such reaction take a decent amount of extra input energy.
This pyrolysis technology is completely self sufficient, why not?
1) I have to commend the level of comments on this video
2) How does this compare to gasification?
Ok So If you could theoreticly have a Nuclear Plant, Solar Plant, Wind/Wave Turbines you could gain energy Green. Chemical Recycling is possible so only problem is money/cost. You need to optimize it. If Energy and Recycling could be Optimized than you would have sustainable fossil plastic.
No explanation of mechnical recycling? What so you mean by that term?
Last time I know tire rubber comes from rubber tree. So, this is not recycling back to it’s original biodegradable tree sap.
What's with the lack of in video subs? You can't afford localization?
1:30 ...hm, I don't think the host really said "oh my gosh"
Wow... Deeply deeply disappointed with DW. 99% of plastic recycled in EU. Give me a break that isn't even a little close to the truth. It's probably a few percent the rest is shipped overseas where it doesn't actually get recycled.
I now see that they correct this at nearly the complete end of the video but I highly question the accuracy of the data they mention at the end of the video. This seems like a number made up by some fossil fuel / plastic industry sponsored "independent" research group or whatever. Any video I have ever seen in the last few years mentions how almost no plastic is recycled because the vast majority simply can't. Rarely is it mentioned that most of the stuff gets incinerated, most of it is shipped abroad.
Thanks for the comment, we apologize if this was misunderstood, what we mean is: 99 percent of plastic that is recycled is recycled mechanically, not chemically.
Regarding the thermal inputs for chemical reactions... I don't see what the problem is. Wrap the reactor vessel in enough layers of rock wool that the exterior is cool to the touch. Use a series of staged heat pumps to remove heat from the outgoing reacted carbon, oil, and heating exhaust gas, and use that captured thermal energy to heat the supply materials being loaded into the reactor vessel. Problem solved... why is there so much hand-wringing over this..
Save Our Planet
let's hope it works&what about all the toxins from this stuff going into the air or vented?
It's explained in the video, the process is air sealed and the gases are filtered, they also power the operation
I wonder why they don't add shredded tires to the asphalt..
I was involved in chemical recycling of plastic marine litter, and maybe it is not the silver bullet, but it works, and it works today. Leave out idealistic approach and stick to pragmatism.
It is a solution to avoid the exploitation of raw materials, and landfilling
Unfortunately, at least 50% of plastic waste of Germany, NL, France ends up in landfills in south Asia. Not 99% are recycled.
We are sorry if this was not clear enough, we meant that 99 percent of plastic that gets recycled is recycled mechanically.
Yes that was extremely unclear. Many people are definitely going to interpret this totally wrong.
We need to use less tires and more trains, especially in America. We need a more walkable environment.
Tires can be staggered and stacked, like bricks and filled with Earth to make walls. Then coated with a sand topping mix...
The resulting wall is extremely sturdy and well insulated from sound and temperature....
Or I guess you could burn Em...
But I would much rather build a house they will last 10000 years.
Tires still consist of harmful substances which slowly evaporate over a longer time period. If you would build many houses like this, you will still pollute the environment
Ban single use disposable plastic packaging and this crisis would become a minor issue again.
It saves 4kg of CO2? But from how many input? This is just so unclear. I love the idea and all dw vids... maybe this can be an input. Good luck dw team. Love from Indonesia
its where they drop it in the sea
Can't believe that this guy just without a lab coat, gloves and goggles opens up a pyoil bottle and smells it... Not the brightest bunch is he.
I was screaming, “did no one teach you to waft is science class?!?!?”
I got a more efficient way to recycle those tires: send to the Masai to turn them into sandles
Well if we mine/drill for carbon; maybe we should just dig an extremely deep hole & bury it all? Might condense into oil/coal again with the pressure/gravity underneath
Its claimed to be the most environmentally friendly method of recycling. I am sure we can improve on it by closing coal power stations and making more use of heat pumps and heat storage.
How can we make tyres more recyclable?
Fun fact: tires have a higher heating value than coal.
4kg per what?
That's why thermoplastics and biodegradeable plastics (not synthesised from fossil fuel) is what we need to strie for
Thanks for your input! Have you seen our videos on plastic alternatives before?
"How to make 'plastic' out of algae and mushrooms" ua-cam.com/video/KVOG-fG5bD4/v-deo.html
"Is bioplastic the 'better' plastic?" ua-cam.com/video/-_eGOyAiNIQ/v-deo.html
Let us know what you think in the comments section!
The lack of transparency in publishing is a massive red flag