ImpEE

THE
Energy balance in recycling one PET bottle
Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo

PROJECT

Title: Energy balance calculation in recycling one PET bottle: Estimation and
Qualitative Analysis

Background: In the related ImpEE resource on the Recycling of Plastics1, it is

suggested that of the 3 million tonnes of waste plastic produced in the UK each
year, only 7% gets recycled. Aside from issues of land-filling and non-renewable
petrochemicals which are the raw materials for plastics, significant energy goes
into actually producing these products, a portion of which can be recovered by
ImpEE Mission Statement
September 3rd, 2005

recycling.
Draft Version 4

Overview and motivation for this exercise: This examples question prompts the
student to calculate the approximate energy that goes into recycling a typical
Polyethylene Terepthalate (PET) drink bottle. This will involve not only practic-
ing specific technical skills (materials, thermodynamics, physics, A-level chemis-
try) but also transferable skills (estimation and qualitative analysis, modelling,
analysis with uncertainty, system thinking, and independent research). When put
into context, quantifying the amount of energy that can be saved from recycling
one such bottle will help the students to develop ESD awareness (impact of engi-
neering on society, developing a global perspective, awareness of ESD issues, role
of engineerings in making our society sustainable).

General and Specific Resources: The ImpEE resource on the Recycling of Plas-
tics1 can provide the general background for setting this problem into a larger
context. It also describes the recycling process which involves transport, shred-
ding, and melting

The student is expected to have a knowledge of A-Level chemistry and First-year

Materials.

The energy required to make a PET bottle from scratch is 8.42 MJ. This can be cal-
culated from the formation enthalpy of polyethylene from naptha. The calcula-
tion2 is shown on the DoITPoMS website.

The main parameters required for completing the question are given. Optionally,
the lecturer can withhold some or all of these to encourage the student to engage
in their own independent research.

This examples paper was based on the work of the DoITPoMS TLP3 available on-
line.

Links:
1. “Recycling of Plastics”, ImpEE Resource,
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/pauł?section=topics&topic=RecyclePlastics
2. “Calculating the formation enthalpy of polyethylene from naptha”, DoITPoMS
TLP, http://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/recycling-polymers/formation_enthalpy.php
3. “Calculation of energy to recycle one PET bottle”, DoITPoMS TLP,
http://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/msm-impee-dev/recycling-polymers/energy_recycle.php

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 Example Question:
Estimate the amount of energy required to recycle a single PET bottle. In-
clude all stages of the recycling process from transport and shredding to
melting. Compare this approximate energy expenditure to the energy re-
quired to make the PET bottle in the first place which is 8.42 MJ. Attempt
to quantify the potential energy savings in everyday terms. How much
would this be if we increased our national plastic recycling rate from 7% to
30%? What are some of the problems associated with recycling PET bot-
tles?

You need to know the following: the density of PET is around 1345 kg m-3,
a typical lorry has a fuel economy of 7.8 miles per gallon, the energy den-
sity of diesel is 34.62 MJ per litre, a typical bottle washer runs at 110W
and can process 60 bottles per minute, a bottle shredder uses a 7.5 kW mo-
tor and outputs 150 kg/h, the specific heat, Cp, of PET is around 1446 kg-1
K-1 and its melting point is around 512 K.

Example Solution:
We are told to account
for energy expenditure
throughout the recy-
Awareness of ESD cling process. The bot-
Issues tles first need to be
transported to the
recycling factory. A typical transporter lorry is shown above, with dimen-
sions in metres, and it has a maximum payload of 26,089 kg. Assuming the
width is approximately 2m, the volume of the hold is:
2.1.3 Estimation and Qualitative

Volume = (1.8 × 3.5 × 2) + (2.95 × 10 × 2) = 71.6m3

Considering the density of PET (1345 kg m-3) the plastic needs only be
compacted to around 28% to fill the truck to its maximum load (26, 089kg)
which is reasonable.
Analysis

Assuming that the distance the plastic would have to travel to the recycling
plant is 100km, we can calculate the energy required to transport one plas-
tic bottle. At a fuel economy of 7.8 miles per US gallon, it would take 30.3
litres of fuel to travel 100 km. If a single plastic bottle has a mass of 0.1 kg
then the payload could take 260,890 bottles. There are 34.62 MJ in a litre
of diesel, so the energy required to transport one bottle to the recycling
centre is:
30.3 × (34.62 × 106 )
Etransport = ≈ 4kJ
260890
Once at the recycling facility, the bottles must first be washed in an auto-
matic bottle washer, which runs at a power of 110 W and can process 60
bottles per minute:

Ewashing = 110 J/s × 60

60 Bottles/seconds= 110 J

After washing, the bottles are shredded by a machine operating a 7.5kW

motor and an output of 150kg/h. The energy used by the machine is thus
27MJ/h and it processes 1500 bottles per hour:

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 Eshredding = 27 MJ/1500 bottles ≈ 18kJ
We can also calculate the energy required to melt down one plastic bottle.
2.3 System Thinking
The specific heat, Cp, of PET is around is around 1446 kg-1 K-1 and its melt-
ing point is around 512 K. Therefore the energy to heat one PET bottle to
its melting temperature would be:

Emelting = ∆T × CP × m = 219 × 1446 × 0.1 = 31.7 kJ

The heat of melting one bottle is 125 J so the total energy to melt down one
PET bottle is:
Emelting = 31700 + 125 = 31.8 kJ

Thus, the total energy used in recycling the bottle into pellet form is:

Erecycling ≈ 4000 + 110 + 18000 + 31800 ≈ 53.91 kJ

In comparison, the energy required to make an equivalent bottle, 8.42 MJ,

2.1.4 Analysis with
is on the order of 100 times as great! In other words, recycling reduced the
Uncertainty energy expenditure of a PET bottle to around 1%.

To put the energy saving into context, a 60 W lightbulb consumes around

216 kJ per hour. Thus, recycling just one PET bottle saves enough electric-
ity to power a lightbulb for almost 38 hours!

We are told that annually about 9.2 billion PET bottles are consumed
Impact of around the world, of which only 7% are recycled. If this were increased to
Engineering on the 30%, this would be an additional 2 billion bottles that are recycled instead
Environment of manufactured. If each recycled bottle saved around 8 MJ, that would a
total global energy savings of around 1.7 X 1016 J. This is the entire annual
production of a typical 600MWe nuclear power station!

The biggest disadvantage of recycling PET is that the process is intolerant

of impurities which typically means that a PET bottle can only be recycled
once. Other disadvantages are that the sorting and recycling process is
rather labour intensive, and that the market for recycled plastics is not
fully developed.

Developing a novel material and/or recycling solution to replace PET bot-

tles would have a dramatic impact on the global environment.

Transferable Skills:

Estimation and qualitative analysis (2.1.3)/Analysis with Uncertainty (2.1.4) In

this calculation, the students are expected to make estimations to come up with
approximate answers. Although this is reflective of the real world, it is quite dif-
ferent from what is done in the standard curriculum so many students feel un-
comfortable. The lecturer should stress to the students that the objective of the
question is to qualify the relative impact of recycling a PET bottle, not to get an
exact scientific value for the energy involved. This concept is embodied in the
concluding answer “The energy required to recycle a PET bottle is in the tens of
kilojoules, but the energy to make one from scratch is several megajoules.” This
difference of several orders of magnitude should reassure the student that any
estimation errors are likely to have no impact. For example, if the distance re-

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quired to transport the bottles was instead 500km, the extra 16 kJ expended
would would not change the conclusion in any qualitative sense whatsoever.

System Thinking (2.3) A perceptive student might notice that the energy re-
quired to shred the bottles is the same order of magnitude as the energy required
to melt the bottles. Since the energy expended on shredding the bottles mostly
becomes waste heat energy dumped into the system, this would suggest that the
bottles come close to melting during the shredding process. Indeed, this is a real
world problem with the shredding stage of the recycling process; the plastic
starts melting and gumming up the shredding equipment. This is a good exam-
ple of “broad-perspective systems thinking”.

ESD Skills Developed:

Awareness of ESD Issues. The students is made aware of some of the issues in-
volved in recycling PET. For example, most people consider the recycling process
to be one about reusing materials, but clearly it is just as much about reducing
energy use.

Impact of Engineering on the Environment. The amount of energy saved in re-

cycling one PET bottle was calculated to be the order of several Megajoules. To
place this otherwise abstract value into context, the students are asked to relate
this to the operation of a lightbulb. This helps them to appreciate the scale of the
energy saved. Finally, they are made aware that only 7% of bottles are recycled
and what impact it would be if this were increased to 30%.

The labels used to describe the transferable

skills refer to the CDIO Syllabus. See
www.cdio.org for more details.

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