Doctoral Dissertation Proposes Solution to Dispose of Municipal Solid Waste

A doctoral dissertation defended by a UFPel researcher proposes one possible solution to the serious problem of municipal solid waste disposal by using waste tire in the production of polymer blends (mechanical mixing of different plastics) containing high concentration of recycled material.

Professor Fabiula Danielli Bastos de Sousa from the undergraduate program in Materials Engineering defended her dissertation in Nancy, France, last July. She earned her PhD degree in Process and Products Engineering from the Université de Lorraine. Her work is entitled Etude du procédé d’élaboration of mélanges of polyéthylène renforcé avec des nanocharges et résidus of régénérés par micro-ondes tires.

“Unserviceable tires are very damaging to public health and the environment, since they are bulky objects that need to be stored in suitable places to avoid the proliferation of insect vectors of diseases such as dengue and zica, besides  other rodents. Also, they are difficult to process due to their initial vulcanization and the undetermined time  for its natural degradation,” says the  UFPel professor.

Among the main contributions of the research, she says, it is concluded that the properties of polymer blends are dependent on the processing parameters used and the vulcanization of the kinetics of the elastomeric phase. Likewise, the devulcanization process by microwave was an effective process to produce recycled elastomers with ability to flow.