Recycling hard-to-recycle plastic into bricks - a promising move from Kenya

[alhoon]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kenyan-wo...053411779.html

The gist: A Kenyan engineer has a pilot plant that turns other-wise-hard-to-recycle plastic to bricks for pavements. Bricks that are 1/2 the weight and 6-7 times stronger than ordinary bricks. For the time they have a capacity of 1000-1500 bricks/day which is a bit underwhelming but they will soon have the machines to triple the production.


Read the article and watch the video. That woman is my new hero. I really hope she will find success and I hope her project will receive further funding. 1000-1500 bricks per day is more "proof of concept" than a factory. They are probably enough to cover 15-20 sq.meters per day.
Furthermore, as the article states, she has recycled ~20 tons of plastic since she started in 2017. But in the video she mentions how Nairobi produces 500 tons per day. So she really has to rump up production. Cheap and light cement bricks are good for everyone.

I also hope she makes a patent out of this and sells the patent so that other places can follow her example.

I already asked a friend of mine that is doing her PhD in materials. We use cement as a way to recycle coal power plant ash but the cement we make is not as good as this one is supposed to be from my understanding. Half the weight and x6-7 the strength at lower cost (because plastic is light so easy to carry) is very promising.
Generally, the lab my friend does her research at is looking at more than strength and weight, like heat insulation and sound proof etc. But they also use fibrous materials (straw) to make it happen.

However, even if these bricks are not good in heat/sound insulation, they are being used as pavement so far. The requirements for pavement blocks have little to do with heat (although they have to be water resistant).


So far, I have not searched for links etc to support this project with my meager finances but I plan to ask Green Peace.


So, question time: Do the rest of you think this is a worthwhile project or it is more of a niche solution that will be able to slightly dent the plastic pollution outside Nairobi and it will remain so?

[Aexodus]

I think in colder countries it could work. Ironically, many of the poor countries which would benefit most from this, are near the equator and least suited for plastic bricks.

[conon394]

Great ideal. Although I wonder if it could run into the problems of recycling tires in asphalt/tarmac pavement that than can catch on fire. I hope it used where that will not be issue nothing like a perfectly good solution getting a bad rap out of poor implementation.

[alhoon]

I am not sure it is flammable. It is not all plastic.

[Aexodus]

I'm pretty sure bitumen is barely if at all flammable. Aren't these bricks on the other hand mostly plastic?

[alhoon]

Nope, if they were mostly plastic, they wouldn't have 1/2 the density of other pavement bricks.
They are probably 30% plastic. Furthermore, plastic from bottles is not that flammable. It is mixed with the sand so that would delay or stop the burning. They could be damaged by fire, I guess (or even high temperatures) but I don't think they can be set on fire except if you use gasoline or other flammable organic solvers. I.e. if you're trying to set them on fire, you could at least burn part of them and severely compromise their strength...

but they're used as pavement blocks. Not as walls or columns.