becausechemistry

Drawbacks are mostly the economics of it. You have to convince people to put time and energy into turning waste into monomers. If the monomers you get from crude oil are cheaper, you’ve got an uphill battle.

The catalysts can be complex, but the good ones are really simple. The zinc one in this article is pretty easy to understand. Ours was an organic molecule, but a really abundant and cheap one. (We could easily recover and re-use the catalyst, too, which I also doubt most of the metal salt catalysts are capable of). Part of the project was optimizing that catalyst. We found ones that worked a little better, but were like 10x as expensive. So we just used a little more of the simple one and figured out how to use it over and over.

I worked on a similar (but competing) technology to this one for a few years. Depolymerization is absolutely the way forward for most polymer recycling.

For most uses, manufacturers want plastic that’s colorless and has good physical properties. Melting down clear plastic can work, but it degrades the polymers in hard-to-control ways. And if there’s any pigment in the plastic, forget about it.

If you break down polymers into their constituent monomers, you’ve turned a polymer process into a chemical process. Polymers are hard to work with. Chemicals are, comparatively, pretty easy. You can do a step or two to extract all the color and impurities, then re-polymerize the cleaned up material and get plastic that’s indistinguishable from brand new.

If your depoly process is good, it can distinguish between different polymers, so you can recycle mixed waste streams. Ours was even pretty good at distinguishing nylon from PET, which I sorta doubt the zinc process will be. But hey, more competition in this space is gonna be good for the world.

It’s way closer to burning up (like, it’ll do it soon and uncontrollably without intervention) than a typical graveyard orbit. And if (when) it started breaking up in a poorly-chosen museum orbit, things would get very messy very fast.

I say send up a lil robot buddy that can hover around and 3D scan the interior for a few months and let anyone with a VR headset go hang out when they want to answer emails or whatever.

And also that Lukashenko was widely known for preferring a more reasonable policy toward Ukraine, and he was set to inherit the presidency upon Putin’s death, and that Putin was like right about to die because he became the leader of Russia like 68 years ago

clearing the launch tower during a test launch with an experimental rocket that has no payload and no humans aboard is success

managing to get into the right orbit without aborting using a rocket that’s launched since the 60s and is lit with giant matchsticks is success

You, an idiot: “these are comparable”

They sort of do, or they do in a way that makes them almost useless once they hit their final low level. Are you suggesting that instead of asymptotically going to zero, they just hit zero at some point?

I don’t think articles like this help that situation. “Plastic isn’t actually recyclable” is a pretty dangerous mind virus that’s basically already running rampant.

Pyrolysis isn’t perfect. But it is absolutely better than throwing plastic in a landfill, and can handle otherwise impossible-to-recycle mixed feedstocks.

The process I worked on recycled PET while leaving the other materials in the mix untouched, ready to go through a different specialized process. That was kind of the whole point of it. Those sorts of technologies are harder in the sense that the tech is more sophisticated, but realistically doesn’t cost more to run once you have it going. The future isn’t all doom and gloom. That’s why I hate these “don’t bother recycling” articles.

There are alternatives to pyrolysis that are slowly coming online. They have their drawbacks – it’s certainly easier to chuck a bunch of mixed plastic into a reactor and heat it up until something happens – but they’re real.

I worked on one of them for a few years. It’s pretty cool! They’re currently building a pilot plant to demonstrate the technology at scale.

Yes. Muzzle loaders. Shoot once, then spend a few minutes loading a powder charge and a bullet down the barrel. They weren’t flintlock muskets like it was the 1700s, they were modern rifles. Just loaded through the muzzles. It gives the deer a fighting chance. You have to hit on the first shot. Did you know that people also hunt with a bow and arrow? Those have been around since the Neolithic. Sometimes not using the most advanced tech is the point.

It’s funny that you typed all that stuff trying to explain firearms to someone who you assume knows nothing about them. I’ve shot everything from pellet guns to the aforementioned muzzle loader to a .30-06 to, yes, an AR-15. I can pick up most guns and check to see if the chamber’s clear. I can disassemble and clean and put them back together.

I want these things to go away. Not just AR-15’s. Anything semiautomatic with a magazine that can hold more than, let’s say, six rounds. Anything beyond a revolver is over the top for personal protection, and if you think that’s not true you’re a lunatic or just want to cosplay army guy. Duh, AR-15’s are the most commonly used firearm in shootings because there’s a lot of them. How about we make there be less of them and other guns that can kill so many people so quickly?

Enforcement at fewer points (manufacturers, distributors) is much easier than at each individual person with a gun being evaluated.

Okay, then. I guess I’ll ignore the muzzle loaders my dad and all his friends used to hunt with until the AR-15 became such a symbol of the “cold dead hands” crowd that they all went ahead and got one. And then a few more.

I think the AR-15 should be banned because I think any semiautomatic rifle and pistol with a magazine capacity of more than a few rounds should be banned. That’s enough for the “guns are easier than getting medicated for anxiety” crowd to feel like they can engage in deadly personal defense without making it easy for someone to walk into a school or church or business and just unload.

I mean depending on who the wellness check is for, the answer may be “they are not well, because they were shot by a cop for no reason, and whoops that was their neighbor, and also the cop shot the neighbor’s dog too”