Q&A with MTU Research Award Winner David Shonnard
Basic. Scalable. Sustainable. Our 2020 Michigan Tech Study Award winner makes
strides in recycling plastic waste.
No shock, plastic melts when you warmth it up. Carried out just appropriate, melting down plastic
could develop a circular economic system that ensures plastic receives recycled and reused alternatively
of thrown out. The particulars of melting plastic to improve a wasteful major image is
the present concentrate of David Shonnard’s analysis.
Shonnard is a professor of chemical engineering, the Richard and Bonnie Robbins Chair in Sustainable Use of Components and the director
of the Sustainable Futures Institute at Michigan Technological College. He leads interdisciplinary teams finding out biofuels
and environmentally friendly chemistry applying existence cycle assessments for the two products and industrial processes. Shonnard also heads the Tech Forward Sustainability and Resilience initiative.
Provided the world scale of plastic waste — and the fact that takeout containers, outfits,
tablets and almost everything else we use plastics for are not going away overnight — it’s
easy to sense guilt or dismay at the mere sight of a cafeteria spork. But Shonnard
sees an option alternatively.
Plastics occur in numerous designs and dimensions, specially on the molecular amount, which makes
them complicated to recycle with simplicity. With warmth and time, a person variety of plastic can be
turned into a different. Within a reactor outfitted with a heated steel pipe that funnels
plastic vapors, Shonnard and his team have been capable to command melted plastic to
make the conclude solution tailored for reuse.
“Professor Shonnard has manufactured a big affect above the past 25 several years in the industry of
sustainable engineering by way of analysis and training management. This award is a
fitting tribute to identify his contributions in the industry of existence cycle analysis,
sustainability and biomass as a renewable feedstock for fuels and chemical substances.”
Q: What is your analysis about?
DS: Engineering enables a circular circulation of recycling. Correct now, waste plastics are
a price tag, but they could be of benefit if we can change them again into other, reusable
kinds. If they have benefit, then they are significantly less most likely to get thrown out.
This is a new analysis region for me, but it builds on many years of analysis we have finished
in biofuels. We’re taking the exact same processes we made use of to change woody components into
biofuel and we’re now implementing them to plastics. It’s a pivot relatively than a completely
new endeavor. The chemical field is extremely inspired to solve this plastics waste
challenge and they are fascinated in the variety of chemical recycling technology we’re
building. I anticipate to see industrial versions within just 5 several years on a huge scale
and we are also performing with our Business of Innovation and Commercialization to create
our individual technology.
Q: How does the method work? What are the challenges you confront?
DS: Picture if you accidentally left a yogurt container on a scorching stove — never try
this at house! — but if the stove was on substantial and you left the space, then when you
arrived again, there most likely wouldn’t be any container at all. That is mainly because plastic vaporizes
in a scorching, uncontrolled atmosphere.
Our method will take place in a extremely controlled atmosphere. Squander plastic is launched
into a reactor to warmth it up rapidly with no air, a method called pyrolysis, where
we can command the temperature and how lengthy the plastic stays in there. The reactor
is fairly uncomplicated: a solitary steel pipe with warmth utilized to the exterior with two command
knobs we can regulate — temperature and home time. Quite a few chemical processes in field
are uncomplicated like that. Tons of relocating sections can break down, so the easier the far better.
If you start out with a huge plastic molecule, warmth and time will break it down. At a
substantial temp for a lengthy time, that major molecule will come to be numerous little, light-weight molecules
at a lessen temp, we can develop higher-molecular-weight products. We tailor ailments
of the reactor to make the material we want.
As chemical engineers, we’re accustomed to building these adjustments to processes.
This is a uncomplicated, classic solution utilized to a new material.
“Dr. Shonnard is regarded nationally and internationally as a chief in sustainable
engineering and superior biofuels and bioproducts analysis … In addition, he has catalyzed
a terrific deal of interdisciplinary analysis amongst researchers from numerous distinctive departments
at Michigan Tech, in collaboration with a host of intercontinental scholars.”
Q: Where did you get the thought?
DS: I experienced been collaborating for several years with a professor down in Mexico at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in Mérida and we agreed to have a person of his students occur to Michigan Tech to review
in my lab. The college student, Ulises Gracida Alvarez, arrived with assist from Mexico, and
I necessary to source him with lab space and we made the decision to collaborate on a undertaking.
I experienced been reading about the plastics problems in the atmosphere, so we reviewed
converting plastics by way of pyrolysis. He is now performing as a postdoc at Argonne Countrywide Laboratory, continuing his analysis. He and I designed these ideas with each other in fact, he’s
a co-inventor on the invention disclosure. Now I have a new crop of graduate students
carrying on this line of analysis into waste plastics conversion.
prepared for reuse.
Q: The existence cycle assessment (LCA) solution seems to be an vital element. Can you
reveal more?
DS: We consider a holistic solution with LCAs, which is a technique to figure out a technology’s
environmental footprint from “cradle to grave.” In the waste plastics circular economic system,
the LCAs are executed “cradle to cradle” mainly because of the closed-loop recycling. We
consider a systemic look at and search at the context to make the method execute far better. This
did affect how we considered about our pyrolysis undertaking. It does make you feel about
a method as a element of a process and the downstream makes use of of your solution. We sit in
the middle of that benefit chain and we have to feel about what our upstream supplier
can give in conditions of waste plastic and what a downstream shopper wants — all when
contemplating about how the method fits in with small environmental affect. We want to occur
up with the easiest resolution attainable, to make it affordable, lessen emissions, more
strength successful. Which is a performing definition of sustainability.
We examine waste plastics conversion at various scales, too. We start out at a little
scale to determine out specific pyrolysis ailments and gradually scale up. With micropyrolyis
we can review in terrific depth the chemistry that is going on. At bigger scales, up
to one kilogram per hour of waste plastic converted, we try to copy the outcomes
we notice at the little scale. Undertaking this will take the technology a phase nearer to actual-environment
programs.
Q: Who advantages from your work?
DS: In excess of the several years performing on biofuel LCAs with firms, the advantages to the firms
are that they understand of connections between their R&D and the environmental impacts
in techniques that they could not evaluate in-house. The understanding that my group has can contribute
straight to the mission of some of our spouse firms. It isn’t just about building
revenue in the present reality — firms care about the weather and about other impacts
too. We feel in more systematic and holistic techniques than we made use of to. It has aided
some of these firms improve their method systems and interface correctly
with regulatory organizations.
Q: What motivates you, then?
DS: As chemical engineers, typically we never get associated in the environmental
realm as frequently as we should really. We frequently examine from a technical point of look at.
I have always requested, how can I weave in the overall health of the atmosphere below? Considering
how chemical engineering promotes sustainability motivates me. And performing with students
is extremely motivating — they occur in, they are novices in lab expertise, they wrestle with
producing, then they expand. Their maturation method and their successes in their professions
is satisfying to see. It’s all about the students. Sure, the technology is awesome but
with no the students it has significantly less indicating.
“Dr. Shonnard’s analysis and training contributions to sustainable engineering have
led to vital developments to the industry and to culture. Not only has his analysis
been impactful, but his academic and graduate college student mentoring has impacted hundreds
of graduates and their understanding of sustainability throughout his job.”
Michigan Technological College is a general public analysis university, house to more than
7,000 students from 54 nations. Launched in 1885, the College offers more than
120 undergraduate and graduate degree applications in science and technology, engineering,
forestry, enterprise and economics, overall health professions, humanities, mathematics, and
social sciences. Our campus in Michigan’s Higher Peninsula overlooks the Keweenaw Waterway
and is just a handful of miles from Lake Outstanding.
