Green Science Alliance has received license agreement from Fukuoka University to carry out the revolutionary plastic waste recycling technology which can recover the mechanical strength especially in the toughness of plastic waste relatively simple and effectively.
Nowadays, plastic waste is causing serious environmental problems such as microplastic and nanoplastic pollutions. It is an urgent matter to do something about this issue. Plastic recycling is one of the technologies to decrease plastic pollution. Waste plastic recycling technology can be classified to 3 types; thermal recycling, material recycling, and chemical recycling. Thermal recycling is utilizing plastic waste as fuel by virtually burning them which is not considered as an ideal solution. Chemical recycling seems good; however, it is not a perfect circular system and its high cost is the main problem.
Professor Shigeru Yao from Fukuoka University, Japan has been researching plastic waste (especially now on PE and PP scraps, he may also research on other plastics in the future) from the polymer physics aspect of view. He has clarified that the deterioration of mechanical strength of plastic waste is not due to chemical break down of polymer main chain; however, it is caused by inner crystal structural changes within plastic.
Furthermore, he has elucidated that the mechanical strength especially toughness, can be recovered by optimizing the re-pelletizing process. In addition, he has theoretically and experimentally elucidated first time in the world that the mechanical strength of plastic waste can be regenerated as strong as new plastic pellet under certain processing conditions. He has also developed a new type of extruder which can reproduce this revolutionary plastic recycling technology with low cost but high efficiency.
Until now, it was common sense that mechanical properties of plastic products were decayed over years and the plastic pellets made from plastic waste were also mechanically weak. Therefore, the usage of plastic pellets made from plastic waste was limited because of their poor properties. However, plastic pellets reprocessed by this new innovative technology are expected to create new plastic molding products from plastic waste with high mechanical strength. This can be an amazing technology to reduce plastic waste quantity in the world.