Plastic Waste Management through Making New Beneficial Products
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Date
2019-06-18
Authors
Semaan, Celina
Saher, Nimat
Asaira, Saja
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Abstract
Abstract
The main objective of this project is to determine a suitable method to recycle local generated plastic waste. Such that, many environmental, economic, and social benefits can be achieved. For Palestine, solid waste disposal is not well organized yet, around 90% of the waste disposal processes are landfilling and open burning. Causing the toxicity of leachate from the landfill and emission of some toxic fumes from open burning that affects human, animal and agriculture health directly and indirectly.
Our project is based on collecting local plastic waste, dividing it into categories based on its type. Then, a design of experiment statistical approach was implemented, where different weight proportions of plastic vs. sand were used to produce new useful products such as building hollow bricks, tiles, and/or insulation materials.
In the first phase of the project, plastic waste was collected, sorted by type, and shredded into small pieces. Then, it was mixed with sand using three main proportions which are 40% by weight plastic and the remaining 60% was sand, which is called in this case P40, the other two proportions are P50 and P60. Next, all samples were exposed to heat source, which is enough to bring plastic above its melting point, so that, it was mixed homogeneously with sand.
All products were tested by applying the following tests: compression test to determine the compression strength, and water absorption test to know its permeability. Also, weight and density for each product were determined.
Results shows that the sample P50 was the best sample because of its homogeneity, its density was 1718 kg/m3, compressive strength was 178 kg/cm2 and water absorption was 2%. These results were compared with local concrete characteristics, it showed that the produced P50 sample is better from strength point of view, water absorption and density.
It’s worth mentioning that the cost of recycling 500 kg of plastic with 500 kg sand to produce beneficial products used in construction is approximately 89 NIS.