Energy Students Take on a New Challenge – Recycling

(Freeman Business) ... Fluence Analytics is a Tulane University spin-out that specializes in continuous analytics and process control solutions for the polymer and biopharmaceutical industries. Ranked by CB Insights as one of the world’s most promising advanced manufacturing startups, the company recently began developing new ways to use its propriety technologies to improve the efficiency of chemical recycling, an alternative to mechanical recycling that breaks down waste plastic and converts it into virgin-like feedstock. While mechanical recycling can’t compete with the staggering volume of waste plastic, chemical recycling has the potential to create a circular economy in which plastic products flow from producer to consumer and back in a continuous cycle.

The challenge is the chemistry. Breaking down plastic waste is a highly volatile process that requires constant monitoring and time-consuming laboratory testing. Fluence Analytics’ automated manufacturing system ACOMP — short for Automatic Continuous Online Monitoring of Polymerizations — will enable plastics recyclers to conduct real-time testing and monitoring of the depolymerization process, resulting in a much more efficient — and much more cost effective — conversion of waste plastic to reusable feedstock.

To help commercialize the system, Alex Reed (SLA ’09), president and co-founder, and Jay Manouchehri (E ’85, E ’87), CEO, reached out to Pierre Conner, professor of practice and executive director of the Tulane Energy Institute.

Conner and Eric Smith, professor of practice and associate director of the institute, connected Reed and Manouchehri with their students in Energy Projects, a hands-on course that puts students to work on energy-related projects for real companies. Over the course of the semester, the students learned the technology, evaluated the chemical recycling market, researched peers and ultimately identified potential customers for Fluence Analytics using a matrix to rank firms based on their likelihood of benefiting from the technology.

Conner says the Fluence Analytics project is an example of a new type of pedagogy he hopes to bring more of to the energy program: project based learning. In project-based learning, students interact with a company on a specific project over the course of a semester or part of a semester, producing a deliverable at the end.

Conner says Freeman, with its longtime focus on experiential learning, is a perfect match for project-based learning.

“Project-based learning is a subset of experiential learning,” Conner says. “It’s a pedagogy that leads students from reading or listening to actually doing. Dean Goes is very committed to experiential learning and wants to grow this within Tulane, and given the fact that Louisiana is at the epicenter of the energy transition — there’s going to be a lot of capital expended here — I think there are a lot of opportunities for project-based learning in energy.”

Conner adds he’s always looking for potential projects for students to work on. Alumni interested in working with students on energy projects should contact Conner at pconner@tulane.edu for more information. READ MORE

Excerpt from Inside Climate News: In a report tied to the massive $1.7 trillion federal budget bill signed last week by President Joe Biden, Congress has signaled to the Environmental Protection Agency that it should not loosen regulations around the chemical recycling of plastic waste.

The advice from lawmakers was included in wording in a House Appropriations Committee report on the federal budget urging the EPA to continue to regulate chemical recycling as incineration with its stricter clean air requirements. It was not in the budget bill itself. The Congressional language “encourages” EPA to take into account the environmental impacts of chemical recycling during an ongoing rule-making process by the agency.

The legislative memo comes as companies seek to commercialize pyrolysis and gasification recycling technology, including projects in Pennsylvania and Indiana, or even to turn trash that includes 30 percent plastic into jet fuel.

Internationally, diplomats, industry representatives and environmentalists are wrestling with the question of whether chemical recycling should be seen as a tool for managing plastic waste in existing or future United Nations treaties.

In all, the chemistry council has advocated for and celebrated action by 21 states which have, since 2017, passed legislation aimed at regulating chemical recycling as manufacturing, not waste management or waste incineration. Such legislation is intended to help scale up chemical recycling and allow for more recycled content to be in plastic products, Baca has said.

What little portion of plastic waste that gets recycled in the United States—less than 6 percent, according to a study last year—is recycled by a mechanical process that can include shredding, melting and remolding. Chemical recycling, often called advanced recycling by the industry, seeks to turn plastic materials back into their basic chemical building blocks to make new plastic, fuel or chemicals for making everything from detergents to cars to clothing. But the technology is still largely in the research and development phase.

... EPA proposed an industry-friendly rule change that stated that pyrolysis is not combustion and thus should not be regulated as incineration.

The industry claims chemical recycling is not incineration because no oxygen is involved. Environmental advocates disagree and argue that the industry is seeking to escape more stringent regulations meant to control dangerous emissions from incineration.

In that letter, the lawmakers wrote: “Chemical recycling facilities emit highly toxic chemicals, including benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, xylenes, and dioxins, many of which are linked to cancer, nervous system damage, and negative effects on reproduction and development. The plastic and petrochemical industry has lobbied at the state level to eliminate emission control requirements for incinerators using these technologies, exposing vulnerable fenceline communities to toxic emissions from these processes.” READ MORE