looking for recycled materials from the oceans

[lothar-hipp 0]

Hi guys,

 

I'm looking for recycled materials from the oceans.

Do anyone know a good source for.

 

thx

 

www.riptide.eco

 

 

[gr5 2,210]

What country are you in?  The answer depends on where you are.  Maybe also say what the closest large city is to you.

[lothar-hipp 0]

I live near the lake of constance - Germany
The next bigger city is Stuttgart.

A part of our business is also located in Barcelona.

 

Edited February 1, 2021 by lothar-hipp

[gr5 2,210]

@flowalistik - do you know where to get ocean plastic?  Or only recycled plastic?  Maybe @rooiejoris knows someone who has access to ocean plastic?

 

Wait - do you want filament that was made from recycled plastic and already made into good quality filament?  Or do you want the raw plastic and plan to do something with it?

[lothar-hipp 0]

i look at the moment for recyled plastic into good quality.

 

thx

[gr5 2,210]

I'm told it's called "rPLA".  "recycled PLA":

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=rpla+filament

 

 

[GregValiant 1,330]

Reflowfilament.com?  "recycled from the Benelux region"

[geert_2 558]

I am very much pro recycling and pro clean oceans. So it is good that this plastic garbage is collected.

 

But that garbage collected from the oceans is a mix of ABS, PET, PP, HDPE, LDPE, PC, PS, PLA and other stuff. And it is partially broken down by sunlight, eaten by bacteria, contaminated with salt, bacteria, algae, sand, paint, paper labels,etc... There is no way you can make high-quality products from that in an economical way. To sort-out and purify this garbage, you would need to burn maybe 10x more oil than it takes to make new plastic from that oil.

 

So I think the best thing to do with oceanic garbage is burn it in a very well controlled way (to prevent and remove smoke and poisonous gasses), in order to use that heat to produce high-quality goods from other raw materials.

 

This is similar to electric cars: people think they are very environmentally friendly. But they don't understand that to produce that electricity, transport it, and convert and store it as chemical energy in the batteries, it may take 5x more oil than just driving an efficient car with diesel engine.

 

Let's have a look for Belgium: our nuclear plants will be shut-down in a few years, we have almost no natural resources like water, wind, sun. So, electricity has to come from generators fueled with oil, gas or coal. If we would want to run all transportation on electricity, it would require about 600000 wind turbines on 30000 km2 land, or 20 turbines per km2 (everywhere, thus also in cities). And at night there is no sun to load the cars. So this is not possible, and electricity has to come from fossile fuels. Lets use oil in this example, because that is similar to diesel.

 

Let's examine the efficiency of each step (all numbers are crude estimations):

 

- electric generator running on oil, in a remote industrial plant: 45% efficiency (such a generator is actually a turbine like in an airplane jet engine, almost identical, and depending on its injection nozzle it can run on gas, light oil, kerosine, diesel,...)

- transformation up to high kilovoltage in several steps, transport over lots of kilometers, and then transformation down in several steps: 70% efficiency

- battery loader: 90%

- battery itself: 50% (maybe 70% if brandnew, but it degrades very fast, as we all know from our laptops and phones)

- motor electronics and auxiliary circuitry: 90% (most people don't realise that electric cars do have a very complex water-cooling system, way more complex than in combustion engines, plus an oil pump and oil system, and a gearbox and differential, all eating power too).

- motor itself: 90%

 

All combined, this gives an efficiency of about 11%. So, you would be much better off driving a diesel car with efficiency of 45%: that eats 4x less oil than your "environmentally friendly electric car". And then we don't talk about the huge amounts of rare-earth materials that the batteries require (which pollutes the third world), and the high recycling costs.

 

So, you have to be carefull not to fall into that same trap when recycling plastics.

 

[gr5 2,210]

Every country is different but in most countries electricity is moving to 100% renewables (slowly).  So why not slowly move transportation to electricity at the same time as moving your grid to renewables.  Buying electric cars slowly signals the industry to switch over and this takes decades.  So it's good to "start" moving the auto industry now even if short term, for some countries, it's less efficient.

[marine3D 6]

I'm a fan of https://fishyfilaments.com - used fishing nets turned into filament so literally from the ocean (As the original post stated!) but definitely not an easy filament to print with

[gr5 2,210]

More replies:

https://www.formfutura.com/shop/product/reform-rpla-2838

 

Nylon fish nets recycled to filament:

https://fishyfilaments.com/

 

Note that PLA gives you the best quality prints and is the easiest to print.  Other plastics need higher temperatures and if they are printed at higher temperatures then they shrink more as they cool and start to get more difficult if you don't have a heated bed or might even need a heated chamber.  What kind of printer do you have?  Does it print higher temp materials than just PLA?