Scientists use microwave radiation to recover copper from old VVF power cables
Scientists use microwave radiation to recover copper from old VVF power cables
A Japan-Italy research team say they have developed a simple and convenient method for recovering copper wires from PVC cables that involves the use of microwave radiation and avoids the generation or use of toxic chemicals.
While this might be an improvement over chucking cables onto a bonfire but i think it's unnecessarily high tech. If the cables already need to be cut laterally into specific sections to conform to the wavelength and it uses 200w, then a better design would be to pull the cable over a blade to part the sheath like a hot dog bun. You could do that with a fraction of the power, no emissions from the pyrolysis and simpler more available tools; just some dies/jigs, blades and a motor. It could even be hand cranked. This isn't something that would get research funding though. And I bet there is already a tinkerer doing it somewhere in a shack in Ghana or Pakistan.
BigStackD on YouTube has an electric cable stripper, which does exactly this, automatically and quickly! It’s really cool.
That's very time consuming though. I think the idea is to incentivize recovery for large amounts at once, and quickly. A Glass Reactor size vessel is not very big though...
If no harmful byproducts are produced, can we this to evaporate Plastic?
That's the problem. If you're evaporating plastic then you're definitely releasing a multitude of chemicals; some of which would likely be harmful. Since this is to be performed in large quantities that could be a significant amount of pollution.
This was achieved without the generation or use of toxic chemicals. The researchers explain that during the pyrolysis, the PVC insulation underwent rapid dichlorination and carbonization, which prevented the formation of harmful byproducts such as tar, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins.