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Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

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Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

#11

Post by echlebek »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #5
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #4

But is it cheaper? (or could it be) Wood, stone, pretty much everything is stronger than concrete. We use concrete because it's strong enough and cheap (and doesn't rot like wood, but a lot of things don't rot so that's not too novel).

Two points: 1. The article says its "cheap" for what that's worth. 2. This IS concrete. It's a mixture of sand as aggregate and plastic as a cement AKA binding agent.

I thought this was pretty cool, but then 50% of the recommended posts are about NFTs, which are a known scam. They are also by the same author as this post. So this tells me the author isn't necessarily looking at things with the most critical eye.

Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

#12

Post by Isamu »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #4

But is it cheaper? (or could it be) Wood, stone, pretty much everything is stronger than concrete. We use concrete because it's strong enough and cheap (and doesn't rot like wood, but a lot of things don't rot so that's not too novel).

>Wood, stone, pretty much everything is stronger than concrete.

Hang on, compressive strength is very, very high. Tensile strength is much lower so that’s why we add rebar and mesh.

Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

#13

Post by hh3k0 »

shadowtree wrote: post #10

This is a great way to get microplastic through abrasion into even more places within the foodchain. Wonder if it burns nicely too, plastic after all is "frozen gasoline" - here mixed with sand. /debbiedowner

That's where my mind went first, too. We don't need more plastic in our lives, quite the opposite actually.

Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

#14

Post by SCAQTony »

iancmceachern wrote: post #7

This is brilliant. It's like asphalt, which is just concrete (cement, sand and lime) with some of the cement replaced with oil/tar. This is that same idea but using plastic not oil/tar. Truly brilliant. It's a new type of composite building material.

The bricks will aspirate toxic chemicals when exposed to direct sunlight:

"...Plastics leached twice as much pollution in sunlight as in darkness, they found. One bag leached 263 different chemicals in the dark but more than 13,000 when exposed to light! Others leached even more. And the longer bags were exposed to sunlight, the more chemicals they leached. ..."

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/everyday-plas....

Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

#15

Post by yarg »

shadowtree wrote: post #10

This is a great way to get microplastic through abrasion into even more places within the foodchain. Wonder if it burns nicely too, plastic after all is "frozen gasoline" - here mixed with sand. /debbiedowner

It could be probably be mitigated with some sort of coating.

It would be more expensive, but it would still allow for the repurposing of waste plastic.

Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

#16

Post by moffkalast »

yarg wrote: post #15
shadowtree wrote: post #10

This is a great way to get microplastic through abrasion into even more places within the foodchain. Wonder if it burns nicely too, plastic after all is "frozen gasoline" - here mixed with sand. /debbiedowner

It could be probably be mitigated with some sort of coating. It would be more expensive, but it would still allow for the repurposing of waste plastic.

Ah I know, coat it in epoxy!

Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

#17

Post by bragr »

I bet sourcing all that sand will be a bigger problem than they expect as sand is a rare and nonrenewable resource that's heavily in demand for concrete and sourcing it has all sorts of environmental issues of its own.

They should look into replacing that with something that's also cheap waste. Maybe crushed glass would work?

Re: Engineer turns plastic into bricks that are reportedly stronger than concrete

#19

Post by loopdoend »

SCAQTony wrote: post #14
iancmceachern wrote: post #7

This is brilliant. It's like asphalt, which is just concrete (cement, sand and lime) with some of the cement replaced with oil/tar. This is that same idea but using plastic not oil/tar. Truly brilliant. It's a new type of composite building material.

The bricks will aspirate toxic chemicals when exposed to direct sunlight: "...Plastics leached twice as much pollution in sunlight as in darkness, they found. One bag leached 263 different chemicals in the dark but more than 13,000 when exposed to light! Others leached even more. And the longer bags were exposed to sunlight, the more chemicals they leached. ..." https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/everyday…

This is where “new car smell” comes from too.
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