As one of the most important inventions of mankind in the 20th century, the negative news is not uncommon. In October last year, scientists said that plastic particles were found in human feces for the first time. This news was quickly ignited on social media. People were panicked and reflected on this, but they did not know how to deal with it.
A research result of the ionic liquid and green engineering team of the Institute of Process Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences aimed at PET plastic recycling has pointed out a new idea for this world-class problem: let plastic waste be recycled through recycling, reducing the production of plastic products from the source Out. "Circulation is the only way to build a green ecological society." Academician Zhang Suojiang, director of the Institute of Process Engineering and head of the ionic liquid and green engineering team, said.
Inescapable plastic pollution
As one of the greatest human inventions of the 20th century, the status of plastics in daily life is unquestionable, but today it has suffered many criticisms. The data shows that since the invention of plastic, humans have produced about 8.3 billion tons of plastic so far. According to statistics, China produces more than 40 million tons of PET plastic every year, which is widely used in beverage bottles, clothing fibers, electronic components, etc. Only a small part of the waste plastic waste is recycled, and most of it can only be disposed of by incineration and landfill. Eventually, more than 20 million tons of plastic waste will be discarded without treatment, and these wastes will enter under the influence of wind. The river then merges into the ocean.
It is worth noting that the plastic waste that was once imported into the ocean has now returned to the human body after a lot of ecological cycles. In October last year, the Austrian Environmental Protection Agency and the Medical University of Vienna published a report saying that plastic particles have been found in human feces, and the source is likely to be through the circulation of the biological chain. Humans have eaten their own plastic waste! The report pointed out that the Austrian team collected stool samples from volunteers from 8 countries including Japan, Italy, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Russia and Austria. The subjects took the food 1 week before the samples were provided. Containing plastic packaged food and drinking bottled water, 6 of them have eaten deep-sea fish and no vegetarians. The report found that all stool samples contained plastic particles.
In July 2017, China released the "Implementation Plan for Prohibiting the Import of Foreign Garbage and Promoting the Reform of the Import Management System for Solid Waste", proposing to gradually stop importing solid waste that can be replaced by domestic resources before the end of 2019. After the ban was promulgated, the amount of plastic waste flowing into China has decreased sharply, and some "small workshops" that have traditionally relied on processing and recycling imported plastic waste have ceased production.
"These workshop-style recycling workshops are not only difficult to control the quality of recycled plastics, but also cause severe pollution to the environment during the production process." Said Lu Xingmei, a researcher at the Institute of Process Engineering and the chief researcher of the PET plastic recycling project at the Institute of Process Engineering. In the era of "small workshops", regularization, scale and industrialization of plastic recycling are the only way for the industry.
Correspondingly, European and American developed countries that have been highly dependent on the export of waste are facing unprecedented problems in waste disposal and recycling, but most countries do not have the corresponding technical and equipment support in the short term.
This year, the Process Engineering Institute plans to sign a technical cooperation agreement with the United Kingdom and plans to build a 10,000-ton device in the United Kingdom. The green technology of ionic liquid catalytic degradation of PET plastics will help solve the plastic recycling dilemma locally.
The problem of plastics is not a problem of a certain country or a certain region, but a disadvantage of the times faced by the world. Zhang Suojiang said: "Plastics, like carbon dioxide, is the world's most important problem to be solved."
Ionic liquids: mysterious catalyst
Plastics have polluted the marine environment and caused damage to marine life, and have really started to harm humanity. The development of plastic recycling technology is urgent.
Regarding plastic recycling, physical methods are currently widely used plastic recycling technologies in China. "Physical method mainly relies on high temperature melting, although the cost is low, but the disadvantages are obvious," Lu Xingmei said, physical method will make the quality of recycled plastics worse, and can not be reused after one or two recycling, can only be discarded as waste, forming 300 Garbage that cannot degrade naturally until 500 years.
The chemical rule is to degrade the plastic into monomers and then polymerize into polyester chips, which is much more complicated than the physical method and the cost is relatively high.
"Our new technology replaces traditional catalysts with ionic liquids," said Lu Xingmei. The use of ionic liquids will increase reaction efficiency, reduce fresh water consumption, reduce energy consumption, and increase economics. In 2012, the project was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology's "863 Program".
Ionic liquid is a new compound composed entirely of anions and cations. It is a new type of substance that does not exist in nature. It is also the core "secret weapon" of this technology.
The use of ionic liquids enables plastic waste that is more difficult to handle under traditional technology to be fully recycled. Taking the printer ribbon as an example, the new technology can directly degrade the PET while recycling the toner attached to the ribbon.
Lu Xingmei said: "Theoretically, the degradation rate can reach 100%, and the quality of plastics will not be reduced." That is to say, in an ideal state, the recycling of plastics will enter the permanent bottle-to-bottle cycle.
Opening up the "veins" of green ecology
Lu Xingmei said that ionic liquids have almost no volatility and do not pollute the air. They are at the forefront of green chemistry research and have a wide range of applications. Currently, the Institute of Process Engineering has used ionic liquids in research fields such as plastic waste and carbon dioxide recovery, and battery electrolytes.
The research and development and promotion work also face certain difficulties. "High cost and lack of awareness are currently the biggest obstacles," said Lu Xingmei. 90% of China's plastic waste is still being recovered using backward physical methods, and the project was built in Tianjin Binhai New Area in 2015 with a 1,000-ton demonstration device Because of high operating costs, the current operating conditions are not ideal.
Lu Xingmei said that while the scientific research team continues to improve technology and reduce production costs, the realization of green recycling of plastic waste also requires more awareness and support from the public. "If you do a good job of sorting and recycling garbage, and buying recycled plastic products, it is an environmental protection move that ordinary people can do."
Zhang Suojiang said: "In the future, we hope to build a 'green technology system', closely integrate basic scientific research and application, accelerate its industrial industrialization, and create a smooth 'vein' for the recycling of the 'arteries' of production."
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