Looking for method for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for project

There was a fairly recent thread on recycling plastic bottles.

I thought about making insulation with plastic by making a plastic frame like a large sheet of PET with rings holes cut like the plastic rings they put on water bottle with the small holes.

Pull 2 or 3 sheets thru a tension roller and use high pressure air to blow molten PET directly from an extruder head into this frame of rings.

The molten materail should blow out like angel hair and get caught in the framer formed by the sheet of rings. You may need to mount the extruder head so the materail is dropping straight down to the air. A extruder head with a row of small release hole should provide a spread large enough to fill the frame. Speed and manufacturing may require several extruders and a tightly controlled high pressure air flow. Run this thrugh a cooling rinse.

Rolling this would prove a problem cutting it into sheet would work.The thickness of the frame provides the different levels of insulation. The AIR GAP is what most insulation is trying to hold for the customer. That why I thought of PET years ago too. Plastic once cooled is stiff to a point and would provide better insulation I though than fiberglass,

Pull then a thin cover sheet of PET over the top to give it a solid barrier to seal the sheet against the outside walls to stop heat lose. The sheet would have to have some small holes to allow air or the insulation would hold moisture and cause more probelms than it solved with Mold, rotting woods and fungus. Some air flow would be neccessary to allow things to stay dry in the walls and ceiling.

The fire rating is going to be the problem. In a fire the PET would make fighting any fire with this material burning very dangerous. This where I stopped thinking of PET or any plastic as insulation.

Hope this helps, by the way I get $0.05 cents a sheet for my idea as royality.

Rather than using a lot of energy to melt or shred the PET how about just enough heat to soften it and then compress a batch of bottles into bricks or slabs, which have some structural and insulation value@

They could be sandwiched between thin boards to produce sheets.

I was a grand jury awards judge for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair this past spring and saw a great exhibit by a student from Japan who had created a process of extruding and molding all sorts of different shaped and sized objects from a mixture of PET and another plastic. Maybe you could look up a representative from ISEF and get in touch with him. His exhibit was titled PET something....I didn't retain any materials from the fair because they wanted all the notes and results of the judging to remain confidential, so I don't have the name of the student or his university, but I'm sure the ISEF officials retained that information and may be willing to provide contact information as well.

Sounds like a great project! Good luck.

I agree, it sounz like a great project.

Suggestion; as it reads like you want to make mortar for building blocks, perhaps you can avoid the heat processing altogether, and simply shred the bottles.

The process has a number of advantages and meets at least two of your requirements, one being, evironmentally friendly, and two, non resource depleting, and will save the expense of a heating process.

Thanks for your suggestion. Its a great starter, shredding the bottles. However, I would have to build a shredder that would have be kinetic only (bicycle with shredding wheel). This might take some extra planning. Since the bottles are already whole, can you suggest a a method of melting that would be 99.9% non resource depleting? I know that I want to use steam, that takes water which can always be recycled. I need a source of heat that is not from an electrical source. Wood is an option however, I would prefer not to burn the plastic. Any suggestions?

Depends where you are.....

Are you near a geothermal hot spring in Greenland?

Are you somewhere with plenty of sun...California or India?

Are you in UK...could use rain power.

Norway? Hydro-electric.....

Sahara.....giant sand powered egg timer thingy.

The roaring forties....wind.

Do you see how a little info in your profile would help....???

I'm just sooooo tired of pointing this out....

Get a grip guys before I go indoors and shred the couch in frustration.

Yes,

it seems that you put yourself at a disadvantage (to your non resource depletion stipulation) when you exclude electricity.

I think you first need to define exactly how you intend to treat the material, define what are the advantages and disadvantages of your method to others.

I took it as "non resource depleting, and environmentally friendly" being the major considerations in you brief.

when you exclude electricity, you move away from those requirements.

secondly, what ever you do, it sounds like you need to machinery built. It will be hard to beat a shredding process. But seeing as you seem intent on the use of heat... I want to ask why?

what do you want to create using the heat, and are you aware of the amount of pressure you need to achieve to achieve your goal?