Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Abcs Of Recycled Glass For Landscaping

By Marci Glover


Glass recycling is the process by which waste glasses are melted to make new products. To do this, recycled glass for landscaping must be separated according to chemical composition and then, depending on the planned use, they can also be split according to color. It can be recycled 100%, an indefinite number of times. After the treatment, the glassware is transported to the production plant where it is melted and becomes a new product. After this stage, the packaging is sent to the bottling plants, where they are filled and then returned to the distribution network.

This material is processed into expanded granulate, for example. The lightweight filler is used in the construction chemicals industry, in acoustic panels in solid wall construction materials as well as in the renovation of old buildings. Process of purification of waste glassware for the production of new glass packaging involves the separation of iron particles with magnetic separator; capture of larger foreign materials by hand; crushing to 15 mm in a crusher.

Glasses are an important and abundant component of industrial and household waste in local landfills, they usually consists of bottles, lamps and other objects. In manufacturing, a high rate of defective products must be recycled. For all this, waste glasses are abundant, this has led many countries to establish methods of selective collection of glasses. At times the various types of glassware are chemically incompatible, such that a pre-selection is required for their processing. For example, heat resistant glasses such as Pyrex or borosilicate should not be placed in recycling containers, since only a small piece of the material can alter the viscosity properties of fluid in a furnace. Due to incompatibilities, separate recycling channels are established, even to separate the glass according to color.

Once collected, the first step of recycling materials is clean, the cut-glass is treated with chemicals to remove any dirt, sand or grease, then the elements of plastic, paper and other debris are removed. Once clean, glasses are passed through a series of screens and hammers, to the desired particle size. Then it goes through some magnets which remove possible traces of metal; cut-glass ready to be melted is called cullet.

This form of recycling occurs primarily in three steps. The first step is the collection, which is made by collectors, in some countries the selective collection is still not a reality. At this stage, the bottles are simply collected and taken to the recycling center. The second step is the separation, when the materials are separated by color and type. At this stage, it is important to eliminate any kind of special glassware such as Pyrex, since these, even in small amounts cause significant changes in the viscosity of the final product.

Cut-glass recycling is ecologically advantageous than the production of new glassware, since the melting point of pure quartz lies at 1700 degrees Celsius and the melting (refining), therefore a lot of energy is required to process the raw materials. The melting of unmixed waste glass is useful in any case. The melting of glass from raw materials up to 25% more energy would be needed.

In the UK, there are about 50,000 recycling bins receiving 752,000 tonnes each year. However, the recycling industry cannot consume all the materials that have accumulated over the years, mainly due to differences in coloration. The UK imports much more green glasses shaped wine bottles leading to an excess for recycling.

Meanwhile, it is possible to separate mixed color cullet using electro-optical sorting machines. The sorting result is improved by a prior separate detection of the differently colored types of glassware. More than 200,000 tonnes of cut-glass packaging is collected annually in some countries, which is roughly 700 million. The recycling rate is 82.2 %.




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