HDPE

First of all my hackles are not up!

The how to on HDPE shingles is and has been a settled issue for at least awhile. Not sure why your still hung up on that. I shared a link to a company that sells and even offers a 50 year warranty on shingles made from HDPE. I have no interest in rehashing that which is already done, it's pointless as well as a waste of time!

I'm not interested in how many years a home owner will or will not save plastic either! My interest lies in diverting a useable asset from the landfills. I can currently make and sell blanks at around $17 a square foot 1" thick. But I'm trying to address a bigger issue! Look into how many metric tons of used oil bottles and the one ounce of oil that goes along with them then decide for yourself if my efforts have any merit or not.

It will not cost my financially as all I have vested is my time and a free supply of used oil bottles.

Good luck, and good lawyer?

Anyway, I wish you good luck. You will have to decide whether or not you will need legal services. I am not a lawyer, and I did not stay at Holiday Inn last night. I do not want to guess what sorts of liabilities could be heading your way, if this is a back yard project.

Hmmmm, not sure what legal issues could arise although one never knows! I have no intention of misrepresenting anything I make to resell and have access to HDPE that is not related to used oil bottles and that is what I plan on using to make blanks with until I can figure out the petroleum smell that lingers with the oil bottles. I believe I have stumbled upon an answer to that at least on a small scale. I've contacted someone who set up a program to recycle used oil bottles so I'm hoping they will be willing to share information with me. Thanks for wishing me luck! Fairly sure I will need it.

Luke: Here is a winner idea the Japanese figured out: Take solar cells and mount them (hollow) HDPE interlinking parts that provide sufficient bouyancy to float the solar (PV) cells on pond water, or small lake, I suppose. The water below the units tends to provide a modicum of cooling that helps the cells life, and power output.

The pond is preventing from algal bloom by shading a large portion of the exposed water surface. Winner idea.

recycled oil containers might be a good use (if blow molded into interlocking sealed hollow floats). If don't find any customers, here could be more than a few in Japan?

Or you could make a good boat anchor. OR you could mold this stuff into panels to help encase PV cells into weather protected enclosures, (as the back half, with recycled beverage bottles comprising the windows (Lexan, polycarbonate plastic is quite transparent and suitable for PV cell covers). This would lower the cost of solar panels even further if no virgin plastic was required.

As far as melting cans down it can be done, I do it, with the ones I mess up while making heat riser tubes for solar heaters as well as other chunks of aluminum I find laying around.

However cans are not the best for casting with. Extruded aluminum shrinks more than cast aluminum does as it's not been designed for casting with but if that is something that interests you should do it.

I have a series of Dave Gingery books on making machine shop equipment from sand casting your own parts from scratch.

Cans must be crushed extremely flat or you'll lose most all the metal to oxidation which is pretty severe with the cans already. Likely 40% or so becomes dross and needs to scraped almost continuously during the melt.

Personally I'd say if one can collect a great deal of cans or other extruded aluminum it would be best to cash them in and use the money to buy old aluminum castings to use. There is a learning curve to it but I've found the experience to be very rewarding!

It is true a great many casting are available for purchase but not many can say they cast a long since obsolete part for an old car or piece of machinery, made their own gear, etc.

Most things have a calorific value. Go for it.

So, I've been lurking on this thread for awhile to see where it would go. Since it looks like it's wrapping up, but I haven't seen some information stated, I think I'll chime in...

There are three concerns as I see it; two of which were posed by the OP: Odor and UV Stability.

Odor was adequately addressed by r&ddoc - Odor is a perception issue, add a masking agent that creates an odor that is perceived to be positive by the majority of the populace. Some options are: Channel No. 5 (seriously), Chocolate, and Geraniums.

UV Stability was also beat up pretty good, the main issue here is - your resulting material either is or isn't. You can add stabilizers, if it isn't, but this will impact your process. There really is no workaround outside of coatings - but coatings fail and are outside the scope of this particular inquiry.

The third issue though is usability and marketability of the product. Bottom-line, oil residuals are considered a contaminate that can not effectively be removed; hence why your local recycler wont take used oil bottles. Thus any product made with a batch of recycled plastic that has been exposed to oil is considered contaminated and not suitable for reuse in a consumer product.

Remember the Resin Code at the bottom of the bottle isn't necessarily a 'Suitable for Recycling' code. Though it does speak to the resins recyclability prior to use, and also its toxicity, it does not imply suitability for recyclability post use.

I think the only work around is to see if an additional Resin Code has been established for oil-contaminated plastic and then ensure that code is applied to your product.

In summary, I think your quest is honorable - but until they can come up with a way to completely remove petroleum-based products from the pores of used containers - you may have a very limited applicability for your resulting material.

I think it was Solareagle that shared a link to a final finding in fact or something like that from the EPA on recycling used oil bottles, I contacted them to see if they would be willing to share what information they had collected during their study. I haven't heard back from them as of yet, however they rose the issue of cost of running a program for recycling used oil bottles. I have no idea what other issues there may be but hope to hear from them.

I think it would make sense to not allow plastics used to hold oil into containers meant to hold food stuffs etc. However there are a great number of items for which that should be a non issues, switch boxes, HDPE Lumber, oil bottles etc. In all the things I've read it always lists odor as the the main reason for not recycling them and nothing else except cost has ever been given as a reason not to in what I've found so far.

Only thing I know with any certainty is that I will dig into this until I figure out how to do it or learn that it's something that is beyond my ability. Thank you for your input!

http://cr4.globalspec.com/edit/newcomment?objectid=101151&objecttype=THREAD&rnd=9411

How to turn plastic into diesel!!!

Thank you!

ok so i know it may be late to post but i have done a lot of hdpe melting and created blanks from milk containers and detergent bottles and have had great results and as for uv degration the reason hdpe becomes brittle in sunlight is because uv radiation splits polymer chains and causes it to weather in order to stop this you can add carbon black which will convert the suns harmful uv energy into harmless heat this will make the plastic warm when out in the sun but not nearly warm enough to deform it or alter any of its physical properties. the carbon black will make the hdpe almost completely uv resistant and will give the natural hdpe a black color. you can get carbon black from a burned out wood fire or by making charcoal the way i add it to the molten hdpe is by simply powdering the charcoal and kneading it into the molten plastic and i have made a lot of blanks this way. as for removing the odor i never had a problem with the odor if i cleaned the plastic well however i never used oil bottles but it may be possible to remove the odor if you autoclave it which is a process where you basically sterilize the plastic by heating it with steam however this may be hard for a home workshop

Sounds interesting. The bottles that I personally have found to hold what I would consider to be an offencive oder are the ones that have had automatic transmission fluid in them. The others I can hit some brakleen brake cleaner and it seems to negate any hint of a petroleum odor. Between work and the grandsons moving in with us I haven't really had the time to get as serious about this as I'd like to. I have been allowing the bottles at work to drain over night so at least I'm helping keep some oil out of the land fill. Do you have anything in particular that you make with your blanks? And do you have to seal the plastic with something to make it so the carbon black wouldn't rub off on peoples hands? I'm wanting to make blanks to be used for sling shots is why I ask.

with my blanks i made i will be making slingshots just like you wanted to if you google hdpe slingshot there is a ton of them that people made. and as for the carbon black i tryed using a charcoal pill and i kneaded it in the melted plastic mass and then pressed it into a form even without adding any color to the plastic i always knead it like dough to remove any weak spots between the melted flakes because sometimes they may look fused but may have microscopic weak parts between the melted flakes. the carbon black does not have to be sealed because it will not get on your hands from touching the plastic and in fact when i kneaded it enough it was a completely uniform black color without any imperfections.

Thank you!