CONVERSION OF WASTE STREAM PLASTICS INTO AUTOMOTIVE COMPONENTS

CONVENTIONAL RECYCLING OF WASTE PLASTICS IS LIMITED BY INEFFICIENT TECHNOLOGY AND NUMEROUS ECONOMIC BARRIERS. AS AN ALTERNATIVE, DIRECT PROCESSING OF RAW WASTE PLASTICS INTO FINISHED PRODUCTS HAS SHOWN PROMISE, BUT ITS FULL POTENTIAL REMAINS UNKNOWN. USING STATISTICALLY DESIGNED EXPERIMENTS, ROBERT MORGAN & COMPANY, INC. HAS SUCCESSFULLY PROCESSED BLENDS OF RAW WASTE PLASTICS INTO USEFUL COMPOSITE POLYMER MATERIALS. IT IS ANTICIPATED THESE COMPOSITE POLYMERS HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO PROVIDE VARIOUS INDUSTRIES WITH A NEW SOURCE OF INEXPENSIVE, HIGH PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING MATERIALS. PHASE I WILL INVESTIGATE THE SUITABILITY OF THESE MATERIALS FOR USE AS AUTOMOTIVE COMPONENTS. THE INVESTIGATORS WILL PRODUCE A RANGE OF SAMPLES FOR TESTING BASED ON CRITICAL AUTOMOTIVE PERFORMANCE CRITERIA. THIS DATA WILL BE USED TO MODEL AND EVALUATE THE PERFORMANCE OF AUTOMOTIVE PARTS WHICH MIGHT BE CONSTRUCTED OF THESE COMPOSITES. PHASE II WILL INCLUDE DEVELOPMENT OF A FULL SCANE PROTOTYPE COMPONENT.