THE PIVOTAL ROLE OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IN THE RECYCLING OF MATERIALS

Abstract:

With the intention of preserving the environment and material resources, a great deal of efforts has been dedicated to the recycling and reutilization of a wide variety of materials, by frequently targeting the production of advanced materials. This has stimulated the development of new recycling technologies which require not only financial and human resources but also new facilities and equipments including efforts to publish many scientific papers or file new patents. However, at some point, the amount of efforts devoted to develop recycling technologies has to be balanced with the one employed in the production of a given material in the first place. This is because there is a risk of contamination or causing more damage during recycling compared to the original production. While the recovery and recycling process of various materials may vary due to different end-point applications one thing that may apply to all of them is the central paradigm of materials science and engineering relationship: “Processing  Structure  Property  Performance”. In this paper in order to achieve the attainment of full existing potentials the above paradigm is applied in the new reality of recycling necessity. As such a new modified paradigm is proposed that includes recyclability in the close-cycled relationship expressed as “Processing  Structure  Property  Performance ->Recyclability”. If in the development of any technology for the production of a new specific material the recyclability of the final products is taken into consideration as an additional criteria, the efficiency of the overall technological process will be much higher. As a consequence it can also be postulated that the same pivotal role can be equally played during the production of a given material for the first time as well as during its reutilization or recycling. In this point of view the production and reutilization of some materials are analyzed and owing to their technological and economical importance some typical examples are discussed. An outlook in which utilization, reutilization and recycling are organic part of the new modified central paradigm linked together in a closed cycled is presented in the conclusions.

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