Brid

This new discovery could possibly the next move to reduce waste plastics like shopping bags and dishwashing liquid containers. Plastics actually contain high enough levels of carbon to be useful in steelmaking. From CNN:

Australian scientists have developed a technique to use waste plastic in steel making, a process that could have implications for recycling scrap metal that accounts for 40 percent of steel production.

Professor Veena Sahajwalla of the University of New South Wales has won a prestigious Australian science award for what she calls "the hottest research in town", which she hopes will turn an environmental headache into a valuable resource.

Under the process, waste plastics are fed into electric steel-making furnaces as an alternative source of carbon and heated to super-hot temperatures of 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,912 Fahrenheit).

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This entry was posted on August 12, 2005 at 12:11 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.