Pizza is like comfort food to many of us. It is not surprising that a single person in the United States eats around 46 slices (23 pounds) annually. Mostly pizzas are supplied in corrugated cardboard boxes that are hard to recycle because of grease and cheese residue. To tackle this, INL researchers aims to break pizza box recycling challenge with new approaches.
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) recent research focuses on decontaminating cardboards utilizing material separation techniques. By addressing this issue, the study is making pizza-eating more ecologically friendly but also reducing supply concerns for US soldiers.
Aaron Wilson principal investigator for the pizza box experiment stated, “Material separation will be important for reducing waste across the energy and defense industries. To make specific separations possible, we need to first prove the overall concept of material separations, which is what this study accomplished.”
This initiative is part of DARPA’s ReSource Program which attempts to turn warfighter trash, especially plastics into valuable resources to reduce supply vulnerabilities. The vulnerability of supply chains to enemy attacks is an important part of military logistics. To solve these problems, military stations might turn garbage into usable resources like fuel.
Every delivery to troops on the battlefield puts personnel at risk as supply runs are just as vulnerable to enemy strikes as the frontlines itself. At military facilities converting trash into useable resources such as fuel, could help reduce these threats.
Wilson and his colleagues set out to prove a bigger separation approach to be successful with the warfighter waste initiative.
Highlights: Pizza Box Experiment
Wilson and his team used dimethyl ether (DME). It is an environmentally friendly chemical to remove contaminated cardboard for their pizza box experiment.
- The experimental equipment comprises two vertical stainless-steel reactors. One is for extracting liquids from solids using a solvent and another is for separating the solvent from the liquids.
- The team adds the solvent to the first reactor after loading the goods to be cleaned.
- Then combine the solvent with the cardboard boxes causing a chemical reaction that removes impurities from the cardboard leaving it clean and ready for reuse.
- When the cardboard has been cleaned, the solvent is emptied into the lower reactor.
- The team uses a vacuum to extract the DME solvent from the reactor and pump it either into a holding tank or back into the first cylinder to clean more material.
Wilson further highlighted, “With the reactor process, we were able to extract the contaminants into separate fractions. We had a fraction dominated by oils, one dominated by water and one dominated with dryer solids.”
To reduce stress on environment startups are focusing on environmentally friendly ways to mine lithium for EVs.
Why DME Extraction?
The DME extraction technique has major advantages over typical water-washing procedures. It works in a closed loop, reusing the DME solution to clean fresh waste materials. The technique can be scaled to any size.
According to Wilson, water washing is similar to soaking garbage in a dishwasher and then drying it at a significant energy expense. This method of treatment produces a huge amount of wastewater containing a wide range of pollutants.
From Pizza Dinners to the Battlefield: What’s Next?
INL Researchers break pizza box recycling challenge and its success has opened possibilities for a larger range of applications, including the repurposing of military waste.
According to Jeff Lacey principal investigator for the DARPA project, “Knowing that this works for the highly contaminated pizza boxes has helped validate the system for use in the battlefield. The biggest challenge now will be making the system lighter.”
“INL started with this pizza box case study because most people care about properly recycling food waste. But ultimately, this research has so many possible applications for national security and a net-zero future,” Jeff added.
Furthermore, the solvent extraction technique in addition to recycling pizza boxes has the potential to efficiently recycle batteries. By separating liquid intermediates from solids and contributing to a sustainable circular economy by reusing waste extraction materials.
Source: Breaking down recycling challenges, one slice at a time
