Thermal Depolymerization: Can this ease the Toner Cartridge waste crisis?

Even with recycling activities being deployed on all fronts, over 300 million empty and dilapidated toner cartridges still find its way into landfills annually around the globe. So with refuse coming only from printers, the pile of e-garbage has reached S.O.S. (waste crises) proportions. And since toner cartridges are built from materials that will decompose in a thousand years, just imagine how much more of these disposed printer consumables will accumulate from between now and the coming century; before the first bulk of garbage can even start to decompose. Now this garbage problem covers only toner cartridges. What about other plastic based products that are more than the printer’s refuse? Indeed, the compounding waste crisis is staggering.

 

Technology in the works that is aimed at de-clogging landfills of e-garbage is called Thermal Depolymerization or TDP for short. The patented process involves the treatment of organic matter with heat and pressure that eventually produces by-products typically used in the manufacture of fertilizers. By products include oil (mixture of motor oil and gasoline), gas (methane, propane, butane) and powdered carbon (raw material used in the production of toner cartridges), among others. TDP is really worth a second look. Toner cartridges, when subjected to this type kind of recycling process, are free of waste materials by-product; except for water that is reused to complete the loop.

 

Polymerization is defined as a process that bonds together single monomers (molecules) such as hydrocarbons and amino acids to form synthetic plastics such as polypropylene and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). These polymer products are used extensively in hospitals, schools and homes. Thermal depolymerization is the reverse of polymerization in a sense that disposable plastic is converted back to its original form. Natural depolymerization will most likely take several millennia to occur. TDP technology meanwhile completes the process in as little as under an hour. The process of depolymerization is not complex. It commences with the feeding of post consumer plastic into industrial grade grinder (mixed with water) that would reduce the polymer to bits. Heat and pressure is then applied to break molecular bonds and turn them into simpler components.

 

The resulting slurry enters the next reactor where pressure is dramatically reduced to rid it of water, calcium and magnesium (extracted as a valuable by-product). Finally, the distillation process that employs higher temperatures splits the hydrocarbons into (1) gas vapors (a mixture of methane, propane and butane) that are contained to drive the depolymerization equipment; (2) liquid oil (similar in context to motor oil and gasoline); and (3) powdered carbon used as primary raw material in the manufacture of plastic based devices. Excess materials are then processed as agricultural fertilizers. In the end, 100% material recovery is experienced, and the only substance emitted by the process is water vapor.

 

So, can polymerization ease the burgeoning toner cartridge waste crises? Judging from the efficiency of the equipment, the answer could only be a YES.