High speed fracture behavior of glass container by underwater shockwave by explosive and large current impulse energy

Abstract

Recently, almost countries are promoting the reproduction and the use of consumer goods; aluminum cans, PET bottles, and so on. On the other hand, the reproduction of the glass containers is not as active excluding use as a returnable bottle, because the recycle cost is high. The glass containers are fractured by the small fragment called ＂Cullet＂ for reproduction. The cullet is melted and molded again as glassware. The surface area is enlarged by making the bottle cullet, and it is possible to melt these efficiently. As a result, it becomes possible to shorten the time to melt the glass bottle and reduce a consumption of the fuel oil. The reasons with not active recycling of the glass bottle are that large-scale crushing equipment is required and it takes a lot of time and cost. This study proposed a new recycling technique for fracturing the glass bottle by using an underwater shockwave by explosive and large electric pulse. In the proposed technique, the bottle cleaning process before the crushing can be skipped because this propose system execute in water. As a result, the recycling cost can be decreased.