Cell phones, cameras, computers, televisions, cars ... I don't know if you have noticed, but we are surrounded by various electronic products. Have you ever thought that with the increasing popularity of electronic products, the speed of upgrading is getting faster and faster, and electronic waste has become the biggest and most troublesome pollution source in 2 1 century?
According to the data released by the United Nations University 19 in April, in 20 14 years, 41800,000 tons of e-waste were generated globally. It is estimated that by 20 18, the generated e-waste will reach 50 million tons, and e-waste has become the fastest growing solid waste! Some scientists predict that in the next 10 year, the world will face the danger of being flooded by e-waste!
Therefore, the recycling of electronic waste is very necessary. However, the e-waste recycled through formal channels is actually less than 1/6 of the total amount every year, and the main part of it is metal, so people are basically helpless about the remaining plastics. Guiyu Town, southwest of Shantou City, Guangdong Province, China, is a world-famous electronic waste treatment plant with an annual processing capacity of over 3 million tons, but almost all of them are simple manual operations, mainly recycling the metal inside: some burn wires in the open air to recycle the copper inside; Some use acid to corrode the circuit board by the river to recover the trace gold inside.
In fact, in the whole field of garbage recycling, "mixed plastic" (all plastics except beverage bottles, milk cans and plastic bags) has always been considered a dead end. Only a small part of the high-end products such as computer cases are recycled and processed into low-end products such as flowerpots and sewers (so-called degradation recycling), and most of the plastics are eventually buried, burned or directly dumped into the ocean.
Why is it so difficult to recycle plastics?
The biggest challenge of plastic recycling is how to "save" the target plastic from the garbage, because there are all kinds of strange things in the garbage, including construction waste, industrial waste, domestic waste and so on. What kind of packaging foam, rubber tires, animal carcasses ... the most troublesome thing is rubber. The black rubber tube looks like plastic, but if the recycled plastic is accidentally mixed into it, the manufactured product will be defective.
The task of "saving" plastics is not easy. Unlike metals, plastics are easy to distinguish because of their different densities, colors, conductivity and magnetism, but different plastics have the same electrical and magnetic properties, so the color standard is even less desirable, because any type of plastic can be any color. Therefore, many screening standards and experiences from the metal recycling industry cannot be used for reference.
In addition to the types, plastics must also be distinguished according to their properties, because the fillers in plastics with different functions are different: non-combustible plastics contain flame retardants; Biodegradable plastics include starch, polylactic acid and so on.
It can be seen that plastic garbage is difficult to separate, and it is a hot potato that no one wants to touch. But an American boy named Mike Bedell solved the problem perfectly! As a chemical engineer, Bedell has been engaged in the research and development of plastic products before, but after realizing the great harm that plastics bring to the environment and human beings, he resolutely turned to study how to recycle plastics. Biddle aims to recycle five kinds of plastics used to make durable goods: ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene polymer), HIPS (high impact polystyrene), HDPE (high density polyethylene), PP (polypropylene) and filled polypropylene.
So how does Bedell make these five kinds of plastics perfectly regenerated?
Find a solution
"In order to solve this problem, I invested 65.438+0.5 billion US dollars and spent 20 years." Biddle once told reporters.
From 65438 to 0992, Bedell quit his previous high-paying job and set up his own company, MBA Polymer Company, and began to concentrate on plastic recycling. During this period, Bedell noticed the Englishman Lehman, the largest electronic waste recycler in Europe at that time, and became friends with him. Mann's method of recycling plastics is to judge the types of plastics one by one, that is, to classify them first and then crush and shape them. Although the efficiency is very low, the quality of recycled plastics has been recognized by big companies such as IBM. Bedell believes that it is too time-consuming and laborious to identify and classify one by one, and it is impossible to realize automatic batch processing. He believes that if the plastic is crushed first and then separated, large-scale automatic production can be realized. Mann thinks Bedell's method is too simple and rude, which is just a joke, but Bedell soon succeeded, and it seems that the truth is really in the hands of a few people.
Now MBA company has more than 60 patented technologies. Although the details of these plastic separation technologies are trade secrets, we have no chance to see them, but we can still get a glimpse of their main processes.
The first is rolling. All electronic wastes such as used cars and computers were thrown into the "maw" of a three-story shredder. This huge "monster" spits steaming steam and makes a thunderous sound, crushing all the swallowed electronic waste into "pancakes" and then sending them to the hammer crusher. Hammer crusher can eat 220 tons of pancakes every hour, and its 400-pound hammer can chew everything into pieces.
Then, the hot fragments pass under a powerful magnet with the conveyor belt, and the steel in the fragments is sucked out by the magnet and sent to a special passage.
The remaining fragments continue to move forward and enter the next station-vortex separator. The eddy current separator has a circular belly, which will generate a constantly changing magnetic field after being electrified, and the non-ferrous metals will generate an opposite magnetic field after entering the magnetic field, so that the non-ferrous metals will be spit out by the separator because of the repulsion of the magnetic field and enter different conveying grooves.
Let the plastic regenerate.
Before Biddle, people's recycling work stopped here, only collecting metals from waste electrical appliances, and burying or burning the rest of plastics, foam and rubber directly, but Biddle went further on this road. Non-metallic fragments, mainly plastics, continue their journey and reach an inclined grading platform. Light debris is blown off the platform by the fan, while heavy debris remains on the platform. The grading platform vibrates constantly, so that the heavier fragments will roll to the lower part of the slope, while the lighter fragments will stay on the upper part.
Next, the mixed debris began to wash various "foam baths". The "shower gel" uses surfactants, and each plastic has its own special shower gel. For example, the surfactant of PP only adheres to the surface of PP. With the help of the surfactant, the bubbles in the pool adhere to the surface of the target plastic, making it float and separate from other materials. After a circle of foam bath, plastic fragments not only become clean and smooth, but also different kinds of plastics are separated by screening.
Next, the same type of plastic enters a photodetector that can identify a certain color, and chips with the same color gather together. For example, the blue light detector will order the air gun to "bomb" all the non-blue chips in the mixture, leaving only the blue chips.
In this way, after entering this maze composed of machines and conveyor belts, after dozens of separation processes, the mixed plastics were successfully separated according to types and colors. Finally, different kinds of plastics are put into different stainless steel silos, melted and processed into strips similar to vermicelli, and finally cut into fine particles.
These small plastic particles are products that Bedell sells to customers, and the quality can almost be comparable to that of new plastics. It is no exaggeration to say that Bedell's plastic recycling technology turns waste plastics into new plastics. MBA is the only company in the world that can recycle waste plastics. Global food giant Nestle and global home appliance giant Electrolux have used MBA to produce recycled plastics. Biddle also successfully sold recycled plastics to world-class electronics companies such as IBM.
More importantly, the energy consumption of producing recycled plastics is only 10% of that of producing new plastics! It is estimated that more than 65438+ billion tons of plastics are discarded every year in the world. If these plastics can be recycled, it can greatly reduce the consumption and dependence on oil (raw materials for producing new plastics) and effectively alleviate the oil crisis. This will not only affect the price of oil and change the trend of global trade, but also greatly reduce the harm of e-waste to Asia and Africa. "There is no garbage in the world, only treasures that are misplaced." If Biddle can convince people to give him all the e-waste instead of littering all over the world, he can change the world!
The road to plastic surgery and rebirth is full of twists and turns.
The ideal is full, but the reality is very skinny. The magical plastic recycling technology has not received due attention and support. Biddle's road to plastic recycling is very difficult.
As early as the end of last century, Biddle was quite confident in his technology, and he decided to go out of the laboratory and start mass production. Biddle successfully found investors and established a processing plant in Richmond, California, USA. In 2000, the plant was put into full operation. But it didn't last long. Biddle soon found that the factory could not get enough e-waste, so he had to stop production and transform it into a research base. The shortage of raw materials is not due to the lack of electronic waste in the United States, but to the lack of laws to force recycling and prohibit its export. All raw materials needed by Biddle are exported to China and India, because the cost of such treatment is lower.
In desperation, Biddle decided to build factories in other countries. At first, he tried to cooperate with Japan, because there was a large-scale compulsory recycling law in Japan. However, the Japanese factory construction was not smooth, so he began to consider China, the world's largest e-waste distribution center. Although there is no compulsory recycling law in China, some companies are interested in Biddle's technology.
In 2003, after knowing Biddle, the chairman of Guangzhou Iron and Steel Group keenly realized that this was a real opportunity to solve the problem of electronic waste recycling, and there was great economic value behind it, so he decided to invite Biddle to set up a factory in China. At the same time, the government of China began to encourage the recycling of plastics in e-waste, so in 2004, Biddle came to Guangzhou with his plastic recycling technology and funds, and established Guangzhou Steel MBA Plastic New Technology Company (MBAPC for short) in cooperation with Guangzhou Steel Group. Although the average annual garbage disposal capacity of MBAPC is only 32,000 tons, which is only a drop in the bucket compared with more than 2.6 million tons of e-waste in China every year, it is a good start.
In 2006 and 20 10, Biddle set up factories in Austria and Britain. Now, MBA can handle 1.25 million tons of e-waste every year, but because people still don't know enough about plastic recycling, the shortage of raw materials still plagues Biddle. Biddle hopes that all countries can correctly realize the great significance of plastic recycling to the world economy, energy and environment as soon as possible, so that plastic recycling technology can be more widely used. Then I believe that in the near future, such a "garbage disposal site" in Guiyu Town, Guangdong Province will no longer exist, and the earth can escape the risk of being flooded by e-waste.