#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Experts from the Scientific and Educational Center (REC) Yenisey Siberia propose to recycle plastic using a detonation wave. This method maximally decomposes waste and is non-toxic.
Now, after processing, part of the plastic waste remains in the form of particles with a diameter of five millimeters mixed with glue, paper and other materials. The amount of such waste is growing every year.
“One of the most dangerous sources of microplastics is waste that is accumulated in remote areas. Collecting plastic in such regions is not economically viable due to logistical costs. Today, all over the world, such waste is stored in landfills of a huge area”, explained at the Siberian Federal University (SFU).
Siberians proposed to destroy microplastics with the help of an explosion. Detonation and combustion are processes similar in nature, but different in terms of flow conditions and results.
In the incinerators, the temperature is maintained at 1200°C at a pressure of about 1 atmosphere, and in the front of the detonation wave the temperature is more than 3000°C, the pressure exceeds 50 thousand atmospheres.
“There are seven categories of plastic, six of which can be decomposed by our method into carbon dioxide and water”, said Sergey Kostylev, head of the complex scientific and technical program Industrial Explosive Technologies.
The speaker emphasized that it is not necessary to specially arrange explosions for the recycling of plastic. Small amounts of such wastes can be added to explosives during drilling and blasting operations. If the concentration is chosen correctly, the characteristics of the mixture will not be affected.
During the explosion, it is possible to achieve the plastic polymer bases’ maximum degree of the decomposition to simple substances and without releasing toxic substances into the atmosphere – carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides.
Scientists have previously found that algae in the Arctic are heavily polluted with microplastics. Also, we wrote about a study according to which bacteria and ultraviolet light can help clean up the ocean from plastic.
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Text: Angelica Stepanova, Photo: Nikolay Shchipko
