Innovations in Recycling and Renewables

[quintessentone]

Very impressive recycling, such as solvent-based recycling where all the chemicals are removed creating a virgin plastic product for reuse, and more on the video from Chinese innovative manufacturers.

Chinaplas 2026:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGXyUu_uwlo&t=883s

[quintessentone]

And yet another impressive step forward in finding solutions to recycling and/or chemicals in our environment problems.

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"A "new chemical reaction" might not automatically sound like the subject of an attention-grabbing scientific headline. However, in this case, the discovery made by researchers from Australia's Flinders University is worth paying attention to. Summarizing their findings in a paper recently published in the academic journal Nature Chemistry, the team highlights several potential applications for a new sulfur–sulfur bond process. At least one of these applications could have significant implications for the future of recycling plastic.

Triggering a sulfur–sulfur bond has historically required exposing trisulfides to "heat, light, or other stimuli." This new method bypasses that step. The research team found that the process of "trisulfide metathesis" could occur spontaneously by exposing trisulfides to particular solvents. According to a Flinders University press release, triggering the process via this method allows it to occur efficiently and easily. A new form of recyclable plastic could be just one innovation the discovery yields.

Professor Justin Chalker of Flinders University is a senior author of the study detailing the research team's discovery. He explains that it's "rare to discover an entirely new reaction, and even more rare for it to be useful in so many fields and applications." Those applications may include pharmaceutical development, advances in biotech science, and, again, plastic recycling.

Read More: https://www.bgr.com/2135697/trisulfide-b...s-forever/"

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This is fantastic.

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"The reaction is unique because of its extremely high reaction rates, and exquisite selectivity. The new reaction can be used to modify anti-tumor compound calicheamicin, which contains a trisulfide. This capacity is a significance advance in the future development of more targeted and effective drugs.
First author Dr Harshal Patel, from the Chalker Lab at Flinders University, says the novel reaction has been successfully used to modify anti-cancer drugs and a chemical library of relevance to drug discovery.
“I’m excited to see how this chemistry is adopted, expanded and applied in ways not yet imagined.

Encountering a new reaction is exciting, and we already have demonstrated several meaningful applications in biomolecular and materials chemistry,” says Dr Patel.

“We were also able to make analogs of polyethylene that can be made, used, and them un-made so the plastic can be converted back to the original building blocks. Closed-loop chemical recycling is an important capability in supporting a circular plastics economy.”"

"Its application to make recyclable polymers is a promising development for global sustainability. For instance, the study describes fully recyclable analogs of polyethylene and another ARC Discovery Grant this year will expand the application of this chemistry to generally recyclable plastics, rubber, foam and fibres."

https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2026/0...-reaction/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-026-02091-z

[BeyondKnowledge]

As someone who worked as a maintenance supervisor for a plastic recycler for about 20 years, I am truly underwhelmed. 

No new machinery in the past 10 years, only different colors, brands, etc...

The video is a clueless guy walking around talking to people that can't talk long enough to be meaningful. A few have language problems, most are just buzzwords.

I love how he thinks you can buy one machine for a price and get started. Can you buy a kitchen mixer and say you are a bakery? That is what is going on in this video.

The demonstration machines are simulated as the power is not available to run them in that building and they are not wearing earplugs. 

This is like going to a car show and only having pictures, matchbox and hot wheel cars to look at.

The few machines shown that are real have been around for decades and he just walks by them with no useful questions.  

This is mearly a sales brochure. There is no information here. Just pretty idealistic displays. Corporate brand exposure.

[quintessentone]

As someone who worked as a maintenance supervisor for a plastic recycler for about 20 years, I am truly underwhelmed. 

No new machinery in the past 10 years, only different colors, brands, etc...

The video is a clueless guy walking around talking to people that can't talk long enough to be meaningful. A few have language problems, most are just buzzwords.

I love how he thinks you can buy one machine for a price and get started. Can you buy a kitchen mixer and say you are a bakery? That is what is going on in this video.

The demonstration machines are simulated as the power is not available to run them in that building and they are not wearing earplugs. 

This is like going to a car show and only having pictures, matchbox and hot wheel cars to look at.

The few machines shown that are real have been around for decades and he just walks by them with no useful questions.  

This is mearly a sales brochure. There is no information here. Just pretty idealistic displays. Corporate brand exposure.

I disagree as they did a walkaround the machine and it's operations were explained in detail.

[quintessentone]

It appears advanced sustainable cooling technology exists but it just doesn't seem to be able to get traction nationally.

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"Technology is Ready-Deployment faces challenges

 A striking outcome from the technology and private sector session was that the necessary innovations were already available. From R290 (propane) room air conditioners that have operated safely in China for over a decade, to CO2-based commercial refrigeration thriving in warm climates like South Africa, the technology works. Passive and refrigerant-free solutions, such as evaporative or magnetocaloric cooling, are commercially mature."

"The true challenge lies in deployment conditions. Industry leaders identified a severe skills gap, noting a critical shortage of trained and certified technicians globally. Additionally, policy fragmentation across national borders makes scaling solutions costly, and misaligned finance structures heavily skew toward capital expenditure, even though 95 per cent of cooling costs are operational."

https://www.unido.org/news/beyond-refrig...ate-action

[BeyondKnowledge]

It appears advanced sustainable cooling technology exists but it just doesn't seem to be able to get traction nationally.

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"Technology is Ready-Deployment faces challenges

 A striking outcome from the technology and private sector session was that the necessary innovations were already available. From R290 (propane) room air conditioners that have operated safely in China for over a decade, to CO2-based commercial refrigeration thriving in warm climates like South Africa, the technology works. Passive and refrigerant-free solutions, such as evaporative or magnetocaloric cooling, are commercially mature."

"The true challenge lies in deployment conditions. Industry leaders identified a severe skills gap, noting a critical shortage of trained and certified technicians globally. Additionally, policy fragmentation across national borders makes scaling solutions costly, and misaligned finance structures heavily skew toward capital expenditure, even though 95 per cent of cooling costs are operational."

https://www.unido.org/news/beyond-refrig...ate-action

Flamable gas as a refrigerant. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire

An electrical fault in a refrigerator with a flamable refrigerant was the start of that disaster. 

Co2 should be fine. Compressing air is also an option that no one looks at as it was used in the first air conditioner and is pretty much unprofitable.

Swamp coolers don't work in half the world. They stop working when the humidity is high which is when they are needed. In dry areas of the world, your body and clothing do exactly the same thing for free so the swamp coolers are unnecessary there.

New tech is just rebranded old tech and abandoned ideas.

[BeyondKnowledge]

I disagree as they did a walkaround the machine and it's operations were explained in detail.

Detail? Do you buy a house from looking at the color it is painted? Do you buy a car when they say it will go and you don't even know if it is a compact, a pickup truck, or a van? 

That is the level of detail in that video.

I have installed, maintained, and rebuilt some of those machines. An extruder is an extruder. A grinder is a grinder. A classifyer is a classifyer. They might look shiny and different. That is just because they were just made and the knobs and buttons are different. The underlying technology is decades old.

While you do make good posts, you have nothing to work with in this thread that is new or innovative.

[quintessentone]

Detail? Do you buy a house from looking at the color it is painted? Do you buy a car when they say it will go and you don't even know if it is a compact, a pickup truck, or a van? 

That is the level of detail in that video.

I have installed, maintained, and rebuilt some of those machines. An extruder is an extruder. A grinder is a grinder. A classifyer is a classifyer. They might look shiny and different. That is just because they were just made and the knobs and buttons are different. The underlying technology is decades old.

While you do make good posts, you have nothing to work with in this thread that is new or innovative.

Well it's all new to me and some others, I would hazard a guess.

[quintessentone]

Here's another fantastic innovation in carbon capture where everyone can become a climate change warrior.

"In a paper recently published in Science Advances, researchers from the lab of UChicago PME Asst. Prof. Po-Chun Hsu developed a distributed carbon nanofiber direct air capture (DAC) filter that could potentially turn every home, office, school or other building into a small carbon-capture system working toward the global problem of airborne CO2.
A life-cycle analysis shows that – even after factoring extra CO2 released by everything from manufacture and transportation to maintenance and disposal – the new filter is 92.1% efficient in removing carbon dioxide from the air.

“Every building already has ventilation systems that move large volumes of air every day. By integrating our carbon-capture filters into these systems, we can remove carbon directly from the air without building new plants or using extra land,” said first author Ronghui Wu, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University who was a postdoctoral researcher in Hsu’s lab at the time of the research. “It’s a practical and scalable way to make carbon capture part of everyday infrastructure.”

On the largest possible level, replacing every building air filter with this new model could remove up to 596
megatonnes of carbon dioxide from the air – the equivalent of taking 130 million cars off the road for a year.
But on the individual level, every home, office or school that switch to DAC filters should expect lower energy bills. One study from 2024 indicated those savings could be up to 21.66%.

“Normally, air-conditioning systems need to pull in a lot of outside air to keep indoor carbon dioxide levels low,” Wu said. “Our filter removes carbon dioxide inside the building, so the system doesn’t have to bring in as much outside air. That means less air needs to be heated or cooled, which reduces the energy consumptions in HVAC.”"

https://pme.uchicago.edu/news/innovation...re-devices

I am into saving up to 21.66% on my heating/HVAC bill, for sure. 

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adv6846

The future looks promising.

[BeyondKnowledge]

Here's another fantastic innovation in carbon capture where everyone can become a climate change warrior.

"In a paper recently published in Science Advances, researchers from the lab of UChicago PME Asst. Prof. Po-Chun Hsu developed a distributed carbon nanofiber direct air capture (DAC) filter that could potentially turn every home, office, school or other building into a small carbon-capture system working toward the global problem of airborne CO2.
A life-cycle analysis shows that – even after factoring extra CO2 released by everything from manufacture and transportation to maintenance and disposal – the new filter is 92.1% efficient in removing carbon dioxide from the air.

“Every building already has ventilation systems that move large volumes of air every day. By integrating our carbon-capture filters into these systems, we can remove carbon directly from the air without building new plants or using extra land,” said first author Ronghui Wu, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University who was a postdoctoral researcher in Hsu’s lab at the time of the research. “It’s a practical and scalable way to make carbon capture part of everyday infrastructure.”

On the largest possible level, replacing every building air filter with this new model could remove up to 596
megatonnes of carbon dioxide from the air – the equivalent of taking 130 million cars off the road for a year.
But on the individual level, every home, office or school that switch to DAC filters should expect lower energy bills. One study from 2024 indicated those savings could be up to 21.66%.

“Normally, air-conditioning systems need to pull in a lot of outside air to keep indoor carbon dioxide levels low,” Wu said. “Our filter removes carbon dioxide inside the building, so the system doesn’t have to bring in as much outside air. That means less air needs to be heated or cooled, which reduces the energy consumptions in HVAC.”"

https://pme.uchicago.edu/news/innovation...re-devices

I am into saving up to 21.66% on my heating/HVAC bill, for sure. 

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adv6846

The future looks promising.

But that is carbondioxide not carbon. Where will we get all that oxygen to replace what is lost to those filters? For every one atom of carbon removed there is two of oxygen also gone.

I checked and the linked article seems to have no way to reply or report. I would like to ask them why they want to eliminate plant food and breathable oxygen. I rather like breathing. It's a fun thing to be able to do.

Did they get this idea form the halfbakery?