Measuring the effectiveness of San Francisco’s planning standard for pedestrian wind comfort

ABSTRACT

In 1985, San Francisco adopted a wind comfort standard in its Downtown Area Plan in response to increasing concerns about the city’s downtown public open spaces becoming excessively windy. After 30 years of implementation, this study revisits the standard and examines its effectiveness in promoting pedestrian comfort. Seven hundred one valid samples were collected from 6 months of field study, which combined surveying pedestrians and on-site collection of microclimate data. Statistical analysis and an assessment using the physiological equivalent temperature show that 11 mph (4.92 m/s), the comfort criterion in places for walking, performs as an effective determinant of outdoor comfort in San Francisco. This study sheds light on climate-resilience of cities, as they have become key urban challenges today.     

北京市居民PET饮料瓶的消费及回收行为研究

2010年,中国成为世界上PET饮料瓶使用量最大的国家,但中国目前缺乏正规、完整的废PET饮料瓶回收系统,导致了严重的社会与环境问题.因此,采用街头访问的方式,对北京市PET饮料瓶的回收情况展开调研.结果显示,消费后的废PET饮料瓶,44％被消费者存放在家里以卖钱,56％被消费者直接扔进垃圾桶.通过拾荒者、流动回收人员等回收者的回收行为,北京几乎所有的废PET饮料瓶都得到了回收,其中90％是由非正规的回收者回收的.回收后的废PET饮料瓶绝大部分都被小型的、非正规的、没有环境污染防治设施的小工厂使用.     

Chemical recycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (pet) by hydrolysis and glycolysis

In this paper we review an interesting method of PET recycling, i.e. chemical recycling; it is based on the concept of depolymerizing the condensation polymer through solvolytic chain cleavage into low molecular products which can be purified and reused as raw materials for the production of high-quality chemical products. In this work our attention is confined to the hydrolysis (neutral, acid and alkaline) and glycolysis processes of PET chemical recycling; operating conditions and mechanism of each method are reported and described. The neutral hydrolysis has an auto accelerating character; two kinetic models have been proposed: an half-order and a second order kinetic model. The acid hydrolysis could be explained by a modified shrinking core model under chemical reaction control and the alkaline hydrolysis by a first-order model with respect to hydroxide ion concentration. To describe glycolysis, two different kinetic models have been proposed where EG can act or not as internal catalyst. Further experimental and theoretical investigations are required to shed light on the promising processes of PET chemical recycling reviewed in this work.     

Investigation of thermal treatment on selective separation of post consumer plastics prior to froth flotation

Plastics have become the widely used materials because of their advantages, such as cheapness, endurance, lightness, and hygiene. However, they cause waste and soil pollution and they do not easily decompose. Many promising technologies are being investigated for separating mixed thermoplastics, but they are still uneconomical and unreliable. Depending on their surface characteristics, these plastics can be separated from each other by flotation method which is useful mineral processing technique with its low cost and simplicity.The main objective of this study is to investigate the flotation characteristics of PET and PVC and determine the effect of plasticizer reagents on efficient plastic separation. For that purpose, various parameters such as pH, plasticizer concentration, plasticizer type, conditioning temperature and thermal conditioning were investigated. As a result, PET particles were floated with 95.1% purity and 65.3% efficiency while PVC particles were obtained with 98.1% purity and 65.3% efficiency.     

Thermogravimetric pyrolysis of waste polyethylene-terephthalate and polystyrene: A critical assessment of kinetics modelling

Pyrolysis is considered as possible technique to thermally convert waste plastics into chemicals and energy. Literature on experimental findings is extensive, although experiments are mostly performed in a dynamic heating mode, using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and at low values of the heating rate (mostly below 30 K/min). The present research differs from literature through the application of far higher heating rates, up to 120 K/min. The use of these dynamic results to define the reaction kinetics necessitates the selection of an appropriate reaction mechanism, and 21 models have been proposed in literature considering the rate limiting step being diffusion, nucleation or the reaction itself.The current research studied the cracking of PET and PS by TGA at different heating rates (temperature ramps). Results were used to check the validity of the proposed mechanisms. Several conclusions are drawn: (i) to obtain fair results, the heating ramp should exceed a minimum value, calculated at 30 K/min for PET and 80 K/min for PS; (ii) application of the majority of the models to experimental findings demonstrated that they do not meet fundamental kinetic considerations and are questionable in their use; and (iii) simple models, with reaction order 1 or 2, provide similar results of the reaction activation energy.A further comparison with literature data for dynamic and isothermal experiments confirms the validity of these selected models. Since TGA results are obtained on a limited amount of sample, with results being a strong function of the applied heating rate, the authors believe that isothermal experiments, preferably on a large scale both towards equipment and/or sample size, are to be preferred.     

Twenty years of PET bottle to bottle recycling—An overview

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) has become the most favourable packaging material world-wide for beverages. The reason for this development is the excellent material properties of the PET material, especially its unbreakability and the very low weight of the bottles compared to glass bottles of the same filling volume. Nowadays, PET bottles are used for softdrinks, mineral water, energy drinks, ice teas as well as for more sensitive beverages like beer, wine and juices. For a long time, however, a bottle-to-bottle recycling of post-consumer PET packaging materials was not possible, because of the lack of knowledge about contamination of packaging polymers during first use or recollection. In addition, the decontamination efficiencies of recycling processes were in most cases unknown. During the last 20 years, PET recollection as well as recycling processes made a huge progress. Today, sophisticated decontamination processes, so-called super-clean recycling processes, are available for PET, which are able to decontaminate post-consumer contaminants to concentration levels of virgin PET materials. In the 1991, the first food contact approval of post-consumer PET in direct food contact applications has been given for post-consumer recycled PET in the USA. Now, 20 years after the first food approval of a PET super-clean recycling process, this article gives an overview over the world-wide progress of the bottle-to-bottle recycling of PET beverage bottles, e.g. the recollection amount of post-consumer PET bottles and the super-clean recycling technologies.     

Influence of poly(bisphenol A carbonate) and poly(ethylene terephthalate) on poly(vinyl chloride) dehydrochlorination

Recycling of poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) waste is a serious problem because of its high chlorine content. Dehydrochlorination of PVC-containing polymer waste produces solid residue char, for which conversion to pyrolysis oil in a petrochemical plant seems to be an attractive way of recycling PVC waste. Unfortunately, some polymer admixtures react with HCl and cause formation of chloroorganic compounds in a char. This article describes the influence of polycarbonates and poly(ethylene terephthalate) on thermal feedstock recycling of PVC wastes using a two-stage method. It was found that the presence of polycarbonate causes the formation of small amounts of benzyl chloride and other chloroaryl or chloroalkylaryl compounds. Poly(ethylene terephthalate) interacts with HCl forming significant amounts of various chlorocompounds – mainly chloroethyl esters of terephthalic and benzoic acids, but derivatives possessing chlorine directly connected to the aromatic ring are also formed.     

瓶级聚酯切片静电起电特性试验研究*

为了分析瓶级聚酯切片（PET）生产过程中分析筛处理量对其静电带电特性的影响,基于颗粒振动摩擦带电模拟试验,研究单颗粒PET振动摩擦带电饱和量以及多颗粒PET振动带电荷质比数据。结果表明:瓶级PET产品静电半衰期超过80 ks;PET单颗粒与金属分析筛碰撞摩擦时带电量随振动时间增加趋于饱和,且单粒子荷质比大小可超过16 nC·g-1;随着分析筛内PET总质量增加,PET颗粒间碰撞几率增加,但PET的荷质比值迅速降低。利用工业振动筛处理PET时,应尽量提高总颗粒处理量以控制颗粒带电,抑制静电对粉尘吸附作用,有利于脱除切片中携带的粉尘。     

Evaluation of Poly(ethylene-terephthalate) Products of Chemical Recycling by Differential Scanning Calorimetry

Poly (ethylene-terephthalate), (PET) bottles waste was chemically recycled by glycolysis and hydrolysis. The depolymerization processes were carried out in different time intervals from 5 to 360 min, in two different molar ratios of PET/EG, 1:5 and 1:18 and at different temperatures. The PET glycolysis leads to formation of bis(2-hydroxy-ethyl)terephthalate (BHET) monomer and PET oligomers with hydroxyl and carboxyl end groups while PET hydrolysis is followed by formation of monomers terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG). Fractions of monomers and oligomers were further characterized by FTIR spectroscopy and by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results show that DSC is successful method to describe the different structures of oligomers formed during chemical recycling of PET.     

The consumption and recycling collection system of PET bottles: A case study of Beijing,China

After studying the recycling collection system of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles worldwide, the authors conducted an intercept survey in Beijing. Two separate questionnaires were issued, one questionnaire to PET bottle consumers and one to PET bottle recyclers. In this study, consumers are defined as people that consume PET-bottled beverages in their daily life. Recyclers were defined as those involved in the collection and recycling of PET bottles. These include scavengers, itinerant waste buyers, small community waste-buying depots, medium/large redemption depots, and recycling companies. In total, 580 surveys were completed, including 461 by consumers and 119 by recyclers. The authors found that consumption of PET bottles in Beijing was nearly 100,000 tonnes in 2012. Age, occupation, gender, and education were identified as significant factors linked to PET-bottled beverage consumption, while income was not a significant factor. 90% Of post-consumed PET bottles were collected by informal collectors (i.e., scavengers and itinerant waste buyers). The survey also found that nearly all PET bottles were reprocessed by small factories that were not designed with pollution control equipment, which allows them to offer higher prices for waste recyclable bottles. As Beijing is trying to build a formal recycling collection system for recyclables, subsidies should be given to the formal recycling sector rather than being charged land use fees, and attention should also be given to informal recyclers that make their living from the collection of recyclables. Informal and formal sectors may work together by employing the scavengers and itinerant waste buyers for the formal sectors. In addition to the recycling of PET bottles, concern should also be allocated to reduce consumption, especially among young people, as they, compared to other groups, have a stronger demand for PET-bottled beverages and will be the main body of society.