Chile. An initiative for the use of plastic waste from EPS (expanded polystyrene) created by two Chilean scientists and their group of collaborators is being developed in the South American country. The paints are designed for traffic applications: sealed floors and general parking, detours and repainting, having the same or better performance than traditional paints and are formulated from recycled EPS (plumavit).
In the world, millions of tons of polystyrene (plumavit in Chile) are generated per year, a non-biodegrabable material. From this problem was born Idea-Tec, a Chilean company created in 2014 by professional chemists, with experience in research, development, innovation and commercialization, and whose objective is to be a contribution to society through the development of environmental sustainability.
Its operations began with the research and development of an innovative process that allows transforming EPS plastic waste into coatings, mainly in outdoor paints. The company is a specialist in the development of recycling processes that allow the manufacture of coatings that contain recyclable waste in their composition, focused on small and medium industry. Thus, from the initiative of Cristina Acuña and Constanza Cifuentes, a mechanism arose to convert polystyrene into high-strength paint.
At first, the idea was selected by Start-Up Chile with which they began to create prototypes and thus managed to manufacture the machine that converts sheets of "plumavit" into liquid. The device, which is about one meter high, is capable of melting the material using a series of additives. Once that part of the process is finished, the liquid is transferred to drums in which elements are added that give it texture and color.
As for the production figures, they assure that they can produce up to 500 kilos of paint with 250 kilos of plumavi, generating a "tremendous reduction to the carbon footprint".
With information from Lado H.
