Sarah O'Kane Digital Portfolio
Chemistry
Plastics are sorted and separated at a Materials Recovery Facility
How do the choices we make as consumers (purchasing, use, reuse, recycling, and discarding of materials) impact our local community and environment, and the global community and Environment? .
The majority of plastics that are recycled are not used due to the plastic being contaminated with food oils or other substances. This is something that we tried to inform people about being that it is truly a waste. Knowing brands that use recycled material also show companies what you are looking for. It's similar to voting with your dollars. The more of a product people buy the more the company makes the product.
What else did you learn through this project?
I learned about the importance of particle structure and why plastic can only be recycled so many times. In my personal project I learned about how exactly plastics are separated and how they go through the Near Infrared sensor. It was very interesting to see something we also learned about due to a lab taking place in the real world and how technology is growing to do so much more than I thought.
How does the chemical composition and structure of a substance determine its properties with regard to its use, capacity for reuse, and capacity for recycling?
The chemical composition and structure of plastics determine how we separate it. For example the process in which plastic is separated during the second phase of separation the plastic runs through a NIR sensor (Near Infrared sensor). This machine uses infrared light between 800 nanometers and 2500 nanometers just outside our visual range. It determines the structure of the molecules to see whether the plastic can be recycled. It works like this the NIR after hitting the plastics with infrared light the plastic that can be recycled reflects certain amounts of light waves hitting the sensor after this information is recorded its sent to AI (artificial intelligence) that's programmed to determine whether the plastic is structurally sound enough to recycle.
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