tims

helper

04/01/2018 at 23:30

Although I haven’t built any of the equipment yet, I’ve had some thoughts on ways to wash highly contaminated materials.

– Segregate plastics into similarly contaminated batches, right from the beginning
– Remove dust and loose dirt from plastics before using any water
– Use mist and fog to minimise volume of water used
– Slowly tumble plastics so that they rub against each other, removing dirt without much water
– Catch and recirculate all water
– Minimise evaporation and smells, by keeping water surface or water containers covered, and as little hot water as possible
– Use steam on washed plastics, to rinse them of dirty water
– Filter microplastics from waste water, using Nitex screen (or similar), under low water pressure, then bin or burn microplastics
– Use float tanks to move plastics between machinery, similar to a conveyorbelt
– Make sure the bottom of tanks have taps, for easy emptying of sludge
– Store water in flexible bladders, potentially made from recycled sheet plastic
– Store water in used IBC water tanks
– Keep water containers up higher than where the water will be used, so that you can make use of gravity, rather than having to pump the water
– Harvest rainwater from as many neighbouring roofs as possible
– Distill dirty water to clean it (solar distillation, perhaps)
– Construct raised water tanks in a similar way to a raised pond
– Look up how your local hazardous waste companies dispose of liquids, as the sludge is likely to be highly contaminated. Perhaps compress sludge into dry briquettes to be disposed of, somehow!

This is quite a good vid but I do think it can be improved.

So, that’s my (non-expert) thoughts!