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Been a while since since i worked with plastic. during my senior year i was in the most advanced/final engineering class, EDD, engineering design & development. basically the entire class spends the entire year working together on one project. that year we had chosen to study plastic recycling. never got very far, we built prototypes but never got our hands on the first piece of real machinery, a shredder.
we were trying to do the common method of mechanical recycling, shed plastic into granules, then melt it & extrude into a mold to make a new item.
issue is, with mechanical recycling that you can only do it so many times before the plastic is degraded, specifically heating is what breaks it down.
I would rather take plastic & turn in back into hydrocarbons/hydrogen, get the energy back instead of making more items that prob will just b thrown away again.
it's free energy sitting on the ground, just need to know how to get it out.
to start i will focus on HDPE & LDPE also PP.
break the chains down back into monomers, Ethylene & Propylene.
then crack into hydrogen, pyrolysis should work for this, turquoise hydrogen.
finally take the hydrogen & turn into ammonia to store it.
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Mar 3, 2026 17:36 Is there a lot of by-product afterwards? |
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Mar 3, 2026 17:43 I eat plastic and recycle it into my poop |
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Mar 3, 2026 19:59 Ah, so thaaaaaattt's the byproduct. |
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Mar 3, 2026 21:51 by-product depends on the specific process, not finding any papers for the catalytic cracking of ethylene(C2H4) into hydrogen & solid carbon which is the desired byproduct, easy to sequester. |
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Mar 3, 2026 22:00
found one about cracking ethane(C2H6) which has more hydrogen than ethylene because that carbon-carbon double bond is gone. |
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Mar 3, 2026 22:23 just dump it in india adn then like make steep taxes for products containing plastic |
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Mar 4, 2026 01:09
nah, India deserves better than to have to put up with our trash. |
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Mar 5, 2026 12:36
I think the majority of the students in your class were not as clever minded as you are. Their choice of making a mechanical shredder is rather banal. |
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Mar 5, 2026 16:37
why? a mechanical shredder is the first step, need to break down plastic somehow, we were sitting in a closet doing it by hand with scissors. Even now still thinking about building a shredder i have some hexbar for the axle, would need to figure out how to cut out the parts, the blades need to be crisp or they won't work as well, kinda need a laser cutter. |
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Mar 6, 2026 00:33 I've considered the route where you grind it up and then heat it to a critical temp. I think just having a 4x8 sheet of polyethylene foe cheap would be sick. |