Comment by pfdietz
12 hours ago
This looks like recycling fetishism. It's perfectly fine to burn such materials, if they were obtained from non-fossil sources to start with, so there would be no net CO2 addition to the atmosphere.
12 hours ago
This looks like recycling fetishism. It's perfectly fine to burn such materials, if they were obtained from non-fossil sources to start with, so there would be no net CO2 addition to the atmosphere.
“The raw materials for epoxy resin production are today largely petroleum derived, although some plant derived sources are now becoming commercially available (e.g. plant derived glycerol used to make epichlorohydrin).”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoxy
if they were obtained from non-fossil sources - but they weren’t, and the industry hasn’t switched and may never switch to plant based.
Also, what you said isn’t necessarily true even with plant based resins. What is the carbon cost of producing new resin vs recycling old?
There’s more to the impact of a material than the carbon stored inside it.
Yes, we were all duped by the recycling industry. No that doesn’t make all attempts at recycling a lie.
> Also, what you said isn’t necessarily true even with plant based resins. What is the carbon cost of producing new resin vs recycling old?
In the post-fossil fuel age, where is the net carbon supposed to be coming from? Unless we're using limestone, it's from the air, so there can't be net emission.
In the not-yet post-fossil fuel age, what matters is displacing fossil fuels as quickly as possible, not the relatively very minor amount of carbon embodied in the renewable energy machinery.
we are having an existential marine crisis due to the millions of tons of essentialy non recyclable "plastic" bieng dumped in our oceans, a fully recyclable alternative is worth trillions over the long haul. The switch will happen when a viable alternative is discovered, and a material that has inherent value will be a key requirement. If this new epoxy is a true engineered material that is suitable for say, vacume infusion molding of things like wind turbine blades,and smaller ships, and injection molding of buckets and computer chasis etc, etc , then it will become universal for those things.
> existential marine crisis
I think you're being overly hysterical there. Plastics in the ocean are certainly not ideal, but "existential"?
the known consequences of polluting the the entire base of the planets food web isn't existential? "scientists", politicians, beurocrats, lawyers, and the mega wealthy have kept moving the agread upon limits to environmental exploitation, with zero sign that they have any other intent, than to take more³ what you are missing is that no one will ask for permission, to fix that.
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An adjacent design validation question on a green chip factory and product design:
Will Phytic acid in Lignin-Vitrimer encase burning CNT carbon nanotubes in a phosphorous char cage, this preventing health hazards and combustion?
This says "phosphorous epoxy".
FR4 silicon PCBs are N-doped and P-doped.