Products to Reduce Aircraft Transparency System Cost of Ownership: Recycling of Polymeric Aircraft Transparencies

Transparency ownership costs have been increasing in recent years reflecting the need to account for the total cycle costs which includes final disposition and disposal. The current method of disposal is to landfill transparencies. Landfill disposal is becoming increasingly expensive and operationally unacceptable for materials that potentially are recyclable. These transparencies represent a highly valuable recycling stream which is currently being landfilled by the USAF at the rate of approximately thirty tons per year. Under the proposed program METSS will demonstrate the technical feasibility of using supercritical carbon dioxide fluid extraction (SFE) of high grade polycarbonate resins from unserviceable aircraft canopies and windshields to produce a high quality and valuable recycled transparent polycarbonate resin stream. SFE is well suited for this application based on its environmentally benign operating conditions, its proven ability to selectively extract target organic materials, and a processing method which does not require expensive and labor intensive material separation, cleaning or difficult mechanical regrinding.