Sustainable plastics manufacturing

Q.9.1 Sustainable plastics manufacturing includes producing plastic pellets with minimum pellet loss, without the use of regulated metals in inks and concentrates, and with the practice of recycling waste oils, inks, and other products. T or F ... 

Life cycle assessments (LCAs) include many of these environmental hazards. LCA can be used to compare the environmental impacts of producing plastic products. Sustainability for manufacturing can be categorized into generation of GHGs, solid and liquid wastes, and air and water pollution. 

Sustainable plastics are those plastics made with lower energy, lower carbon footprint, lower waste, and lower pollution than conventional plastics. Plastics that are made from plants or biobased sources and from recycled plastics can be made with lower energy, lower carbon footprint, lower waste, and lower pollution than conventional plastics. Biobased polyethylene, propylene, and PET can be made from sugarcane or other agricultural materials. Biobased plastics can be made with nearly identical mechanical properties as conventional petroleum-based plastics and can be manufactured on identical plastics processing equipment. 

Sustainable plastic bottles can be made with biobased or recycled plastics, produced without regulated heavy metals or toxins, and made with clean manufacturing principles, and fair employment and safety practices. LCA can be used to provide a sustainable plastic bottle. The LCA process can include key elements of LCA, which features consistent functional units, energy, GHGs, waste, and pollution that include eutrophication, acidification, toxic chemical release, and end-of-life. 

Life cycle assessments (LCAs) can be completed at plastics manufacturing operations to understand the effects that manufacturing changes have on the carbon footprint, waste generation, and pollution. LCA can be used to design sustainability into products and processes. LCA can be calculated with the use of an LCA tool provided online (LCA Tool 2013). 

Bioplastics today can be made from corn, soy, sugarcane, potato, or other renewable material source. Petroleum plastics can also be sustainable if they are made from renewable or recycled material sources. The manufacturing process also can also be sustainable. Plastics have the opportunity to define sustainable materials that are made from renewable or recycled materials sources, made with lower energy, produce less pollution, and have a low carbon footprint. Sustainable plastic materials also are recycled or composted at the end of the product service life. 

This is part of the environmental issues series of the UK Environment Agency. The report provides an overview of plastics looking at manufacture, uses and disposal. The aim of the report is to make recommendations on ways to ensure that society s use of plastics is more sustainable in the future. 

In industry, radiation is applied both as an initiator and as a control mechanism on one hand, and as a sustainer of reactions on the other. Among the many industrial uses of radiation, one may mention food preservation, curing of paints, manufacture of wood-plastic combinations, syntheses of ethyl bromide, of ion exchange materials, of various graft copolymers, and of materials for textile finishing. In addition, there are important uses of tracers in various process industries and in mining and metallurgy. 

Similarly, Dow has entered into a joint venture agreement with Dom-tar of Canada to operate what the companies hope will be by 1990 a self-sustaining PET and HDPE recycling business. The North American company is expected to take postconsumer plastics and, using a proprietary Dow process, convert them into resins for use in Domtar s manufacturing or to be sold by Dow. 

Foam Production This is important in froth-flotation separations in the manufacture of cellular elastomers, plastics, and glass and in certain special applications (e.g., food products, fire extinguishers). Unwanted foam can occur in process columns, in agitated vessels, and in reactors in which a gaseous product is formed it must be avoided, destroyed, or controlled. Berkman and Egloff (Emulsions and Foams, Reinhold, New York, 1941, pp. 112—152) have mentioned that foam is produced only in systems possessing the proper combination of interfacial tension, viscosity, volatility, and concentration of solute or suspended solids. From the standpoint of gas comminution, foam production requires the creation of small bubbles in a liquid capable of sustaining foam. 

Renewable raw materials can contribute to the sustainability of chemical products in two ways (i) by developing greener, biomass-derived products which replace existing oil-based products, e.g. a biodegradable plastic, and (ii) greener processes for the manufacture of existing chemicals from biomass instead of from fossil feedstocks. These conversion processes should, of course, be catalytic in order to maximize atom efficiencies and minimize waste (E factors) but they could be chemo- or biocatalytic, e.g. fermentation [3-5]. Even the chemocatalysts themselves can be derived from biomass, e.g. expanded com starches modified with surface S03H or amine moieties can be used as recyclable solid acid or base catalysts, respectively [6]. 

Major oil spills attract the attention of the public and the media. In recent years, this attention has created a global awareness of the risks of oil spills and the damage they do to the environment. However, oil is a necessity in our industrial society, and a major sustainer of our lifestyle. Most of the energy used in Canada and the United States is for transportation that runs on oil and petroleum products. According to trends in energy usage, this is not likely to decrease much in the future. Industry uses oil and petroleum derivatives to manufacture such vital products as plastics, fertilizers, and chemical feedstocks, which will still be required in the future. 

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