Recycling of Cross-linked Polyethylene Cable Waste via Particulate Infusion

Abstract

The amount of plastic waste is on the rise each year. It is associated with green house gas emissions and hazardous potential if left untreated at the landfill. Plastic is formed from the polymerization of ethane, essentially fossil fuel based, and with chemical energy content equivalent to diesel fuel, i.e. 43 MJ/kg. Thereby, plastics are excellent candidates/feedstock for energy recovery. This work explores the recycling of cross-linked polyethylene waste-plastic that is generated at a considerable amount from the cable industry. It undertakes thermal analysis of the plastic as the first step using the Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) to observe its thermal conversion and meting temperature. It also undertakes the re-compounding of the waste plastic by infusion the cross-linked polyethylene waste into mini-compounder at different waste-to-virgin polyethylene weight ratio, i. e. 5%, 10%, and 15%. Assessment of the mechanical properties of the compounded product, i.e. recycled mixture, is conducted on standard uniaxial samples using thermo scientific mini extruder, the HAAKE MiniJet II injection molding, and Instron tensile machine. At as high as 15 wt% recyclate to virgin mixture, an increase of 17% in young modulus, 37.2% in yield stress, 22.4% in ultimate stress, and a decrease of 3.3% in the melting point were obtained compared to the virgin/baseline polyethylene. From the resulted stress strain relation Morz bilinear plastic material model constants obtained (Et), that showed 25.6% increase, allowing better investigation of the true stress/strain behavior through FEM numerically simulation.

Performance of Polymer Cementitious Coatings for High-Voltage Electrical Infrastructure

“…Synthetic plastic polymers have great potential for providing thermal and electric insulation, high mechanical and ductile properties and water and chemical resistance [76,77]. Polyethylene and PVC materials account for over 95% of the waste plastics in the world, and their essential polymerization of ethane (CH2=CH2) indicates that carbon and hydrogen are the backbone of their produced waste [78].…”

Recycling of crosslinked high‐density polyethylene through compression molding

“…In addition to recycling through decrosslinking, crosslinked polyethylene has been recycled through a number of other methods such as selective dissolution, melt blending, use as a filler and additive, and low molecular product recovery . The selective dissolution method used a solvent to dissolve the noncrosslinked content, remove the crosslinked content, and then evaporate the solvent to obtain the noncrosslinked content for reuse.…”

The High Density Polyethylene Composite with Recycled Radiation Cross-Linked Filler of rHDPEx

“…Radiation cross-linking allows significant improvements in some properties, but the possibility of recycling in traditional ways is ruled out. Radiated cross-linked polymers lose their ability due to the creation of spatial networks in the original thermoplastics to be re-meltable [28,29,30,31,32,33,34]. Therefore, the processing/recycling of radiation cross-linked thermoplastics is much more complicated when compared to the original polymer; so far, there are no effective ways to recycle these materials on an industrial scale.…”

“…A higher content of HDPEx filler in the LDPE matrix makes composite processability worse. Most of the mechanical properties of the composite are significantly better than the mechanical properties of the matrix itself [32,33,34]. The use of recycled cross-linked rHDPEx as a filler in low density polyethylene (LDPE) is described in the work [35].…”