Low-Cost Ceramic Modules Incorporating Palladium-Based Membranes for Dehydrogenation Reactions

65181 The consumption of plastics costs our nation the energy equivalent of 1 million barrels of oil per day and accounts for more than one-eighth of our accumulating landfill burden. The most significant obstacle to a viable infrastructure for recovering these lost resources is finding a means to rapidly identify the polymer resin composition of recycled plastics. No method now exists that works universally to sense the chemical composition, particularly when these materials are black in color. This project will design, and develop, a low-cost, robust Raman-scattering sensor for the rapid identification of plastic materials (both whole parts and reground plastic) along the resin supply chain. In Phase I, next-generation Raman technology will be developed to overcome the weak scattering and luminescence that is characteristic of black materials. The effort will draw on research issues in polymer spectroscopy, heat transfer, optics, digital electronics, image processing, and chemometrics. Commercial Applications And Other Benefits as described by awardee: This technology will add value to the billions of pounds of plastic waste generated by such sources as electronic product disassemblers and automobile scrap yards. Used to test and maintain quality of reground feedstocks in the plastic materials supply chain, the sensor should increase the fraction of recycled content in new molded parts by building confidence in the purity of recovered plastic as a raw material.