Abstract
Chemical engineering students (from left) David J. Grattan, Frederick E. Bakun, and Larson C. Lindholm from the University of Arizona, Tucson, edged out three other finalists to win $1,500 in the plastics recycling competition held at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in Miami Beach this month. The competition, cosponsored by AIChE and the American Plastics Council, asked students to use innovative recycling technologies to design an economical and environmentally sound process for recycling mixed plastics recovered from municipal solid waste. The Arizona team chose a versatile dissolution process, designing separate processing units for communities with different recycling loads, and integrated the units to achieve maximum benefits. We spent a lot of time making sure one unit complemented the other, noted Lindholm. The Arizona process allows for production of marketable polyblends—a vinyl siding, which, the team said could be used for hog housing; laminating m...
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