More Styrofoam Recycling
Interesting story in the Northwest Arkansas News, relating to our recent posts about styrofoam recycling (referenced at the end of this post).
Apparently Benton County waste management officials are thinking about using a chemical – ‘invented’ by a Bentonville man, Sean Stephan – for recycling polystyrene.
As soon as I read a description of the process (dissolving styrofoam in a liquid solution) I had a strong hunch it would be something involving limonene. Sure enough, later in the article there is mention of “orange oil” and water as two ingredients.
Here is a small blurb from the article:
Stephan developed the chemical two years ago and donated it to Rogers-based Advanced Environmental Technologies Inc., which has a patent pending on the product that it calls Hydro-Sol.
Now, through a partnership with AET, the Benton County Solid Waste District is studying the feasibility of using the breakthrough invention to offer plastic foam recycling countywide.
I’m pretty sure Sony came up with the idea first, but I’m at least glad to hear that more people are looking into this possibility. I’d really like to learn more about the resulting liquid, so as to to get a better idea for how feasible this would be to do at home.
To read the original article, click here
Related EcoSherpa posts: Styrofoam Recycling?, My Styrofoam + Limonene Experiment
Technorati Tags: styrofoam, polystyrene, styrofoam recycling, hydro-sol, orange oil, limonene
Written by Bentley on October 12th, 2006 with
3 comments.
Read more articles on Waste Management.
- [+] Digg: Feature this article
- [+] Del.icio.us: Bookmark this article
- [+] Furl: Bookmark this article
sherpa2
Cindy
#1. November 7th, 2006, at 11:09 PM.
I was wanting to clarify that SONY’s technology revolves around the use of a vacuum system, heat, and extrusion pumps, in which they patented only the vacuum system. The patent pending for recycling styrofoam in benton county is for the gravity phase separation of polymers. The use of d-limonene to dissolve styrofoam was know in the 70′s as studies were released with orange juice pulp eroding insides of sytrofoam cups. You can do this at home and is very cheap. For $100 you can have enough chemistry to last 6 months and give this to the local county for use in roads. I am glad you all are encouraging recycling.
Thank you,
Sean