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Abstract
In the last decades it is impressive the large amount of PET bottles wrongly disposed on the oceans and in the cities. Even though recycling has been proved to be a good option for dealing with the waste disposal problem, only around 30% of all consumed PET bottles are recycled each year. Novel solutions that could make PET recycling a more convenient and easier process are needed. Thus, this paper is the first step towards the development of an innovative domestic recycling system. The current work aims to develop a prototype device made of Polylactic Acid (PLA) plastic and produced using additive manufacturing technologies that could be used for both personal and business matter. PLA is used due to its properties similarities to Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic. The effects of Temperature, Density, Travel Speed, Internal Structure, and Machine on compression load are investigated by a 25 factorial design. Results show that only density, structure and the interaction between them are significant to the model. Therefore, a new experimental design was conducted, and response surface optimization based on Steepest Ascent was used to determine parameters that would maximize compression load.
Keywords
Recycling. PET Waste. RSM. Design of Experiments. Additive Manufacturing
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1.Introduction
In the last sixty years, we have observed an exponential increase in the production of plastics worldwide that generated 8.3 billion metric tons of products [1]. In fact, it is remarkable how much plastic goods we have produced, discarded, burned or put in landfills that will take around 400 years to degrade. As the global production accelerates at impressive rates, the global waste system did not accompany this growth and most of the plastic products have ended up as trash into the oceans. Predictions show that by 2050 the ocean will consist of more plastic waste than fish. In our society, therefore, solutions are needed to reduce the negative impacts of excess of waste while at the same time reducing the consumption of natural resources. Thus, recycling is a good alternative to overcome this global challenge.
Although the benefits of recycling are evident, not much of our daily waste has been recycled. Statistics show that in the United States only about 34.6 percent of the total waste generated...