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Insulation giant looks to power factory with hydrogen

Posted on November 1, 2022November 1, 2022 by dishanth

ROCKWOOL is looking at the possibility of switching power during its manufacturing process from gas to green hydrogen.

The insulation giant has linked-up with Marubeni Europower and Mott MacDonald to develop a potential end-to-end hydrogen solution at its South Wales plant in Bridgend.

The research is being funded by the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP) under the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy through the Industrial Hydrogen Accelerator programme.

The current process for the manufacture of ROCKWOOL’s stone wool insulation uses natural gas in the combustion systems and curing ovens. This new scheme will investigate the viability of converting natural gas usage to on-site produced green hydrogen.

Rafael Rodriguez, Managing Director of ROCKWOOL Ltd said: “The group has set ambitious decarbonisation targets verified and approved by the Science Based Target initiative, and in line with this, we are looking forward to enhancing our own understanding about the potential for green hydrogen use in our business.”

Claudio Tassistro, Energy General Manager for Mott MacDonald, said: “Our multidisciplinary team has worked on green hydrogen generation and storage projects across the world and will bring with it a wealth of knowledge, and technical and economic expertise.

“The development of green hydrogen production projects like this are critical to achieving our net-zero ambitions and meeting the challenges posed by the climate crisis.”

Source edie

Compostable plastic cutlery can be recycled into home-insulating foam

Posted on July 6, 2021 by dishanth

Compostable plastic can be turned into a foam that functions as building insulation, creating a potential solution to difficulties in recycling the material.

Polylactic acid (PLA) is a plastic made of fermented starch from corn or sugar cane. It is designed to break down into harmless material once used and disposed of, but doing so requires industrial composting, which isn’t available in all locations.

If PLA makes its way into the environment, it often won’t break down. Because of this, it is classed as compostable rather than biodegradable by the European Union.

Now, Heon Park at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and his colleagues have developed a method to convert plastic knives, spoons and forks made from PLA into a foam that can be turned into insulation for walls or flotation devices.

Foam structures of various sizes made from recycled PLA plastic. Source: Heon Park

The researchers placed the PLA cutlery into a chamber filled with carbon dioxide. As they increased the pressure inside the chamber, the gas dissolved into the plastic. When they released the pressure, the gas expanded rapidly and turned the plastic into a foam. The process is entirely mechanical and involves no chemical reaction.

“Tweaking temperature and pressure, there is a window where we can make good foams,” says Park. “We found what temperature or what pressure is the best to make those non-foamable plastics into foams.”

Each time plastic is recycled it loses strength, but turning plastic into foam avoids any problems with strength as it is an inherently soft material.

Making PLA plastics directly recyclable in this way could be a better way to alleviate plastic pollution than industrial composting. PLA requires up to 12 weeks of composting at 57°C to break down, and must be carefully separated from other plastic waste, so this may not be the best option.

“If you’ve taken all of the energy and resources to make something, any product or packaging, then the very best thing that you can do with that is to try and keep those resources and turn them back into another item of product or packaging,” says Helen Bird at UK waste and recycling charity WRAP. “From an environmental perspective, if you look at the hierarchy of what’s preferable for the environment, composting actually is a little bit below recycling.”

Journal reference: Physics of Fluids, DOI: 10.1063/5.0050649

Source New Scientist