My project is showing how burning trash to run generators and create electricity and energy. But it buts out too much carbon and hydrogen to be very efficient.
Chemistry of Single-Use Materials Project Reflection
- How does the chemical composition and structure of a substance determine its properties with regard to its use, capacity for reuse, and capacity for recycling?
- Plastics and other forms of polyethylene are not very recyclable because when it is melted it cannot be restored to its original form. You can upcycle it though and make everyday things out of it like phone cases, wallets, and water bottles.
- How do the choices we make as consumers (purchasing, use, reuse, recycling, and discarding of materials) impact our local community and environment, and the global community and environment?
- Buying a lot of non recyclable items will be putting out more plastic or whatever material into the environment. Going organic with your plastics or buying recyclable goods could make your local trash facility putting out less trash to be incinerated or buried. The global community is seeing pollution in the air. Burning all these plastics at the end of their life is pumping carbon into our atmosphere.
- What else did you learn through this project?
- I learned that we have yet to come up with a perfect scrubber for smoke stacks. After the plastic is incinerated it creates extreme amounts of carbon and hydrogen. Those gases leave the facility out of a smoke stack which has a scrubber on the top, which is supposed to clean the air coming out as best it can. I would like to get more into this and find a way to create the perfect scrubber.