Scientists Have Found A Genius Way To Use Millions Of Wasted Face Masks Into Road Making

Arab News

The pandemic has obviously wreaked havoc to the world. People have scrambled around, finding ways to cope with the changes. The recent phenomenon has brought about both the good and bad. The world has seen face masks strewn all over the streets and filling up garbage bins.

People have found a way to protect themselves with face masks. Unfortunately, this means that they go through the waste constantly. Billions of people get rid of these masks after one or two uses. Scientists have seen the weekly garbage that has accumulated and have become quite worried.

A team of researchers in Melbourne, Australia, took a look around and are trying to come up with the best solution for the accumulated waste. They may have finally found the solution for this problem and are willing to share it with the rest of the world.


The scientists were looking for the best resolution and they’ve discovered that they can actually collect the millions of discarded face masks and add these to the mixtures made for road-paving. The best part about this is the fact that the masks have actually lowered the cost. Not only will these be cheaper for the countries, but they can finally clean the landfills that have filled up with dirty and unwanted masks.

The Australian team have also made the necessary calculations and discovered that a kilometer of road would need three million masks, and with the recent pandemic, the world can provide them with the numbers required. These masks, they say, are made from polypropylene plastic. This substance is actually able to increase the flexibility and durability of the cement made for the road.

Jie Li and his team of scientists at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Melbourne Technical College come up with the details of the study and have published a paper in the journal, Science of the Total Environment. In it, they described the development of the study and the process by which road experts can add these masks to the mix.

The team have mixed in a new composite material made of about 2 percent shredded masks with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA). The new material is a derivative of waste concrete and a mixture of other minerals that they have collected from demolished buildings.

RMIT Technology

The team of experts behind the mixture have called this the ultra-recycled material. They found the new mix to be useful and more efficient, especially for the two of the four layers that’s required to make the roadways. With the new technology, paving a kilometer of a two-way road with RCA and around three million masks would mean that the world would be able to redirect a whopping 93 tons of wastes that have accumulated in these landfills.

With the plastic roads, the mixture was actually more flexible. The scientists discovered that the polypropylene helped reinforce and strengthen the bindings of the particles of rubble in it. Hence, there was more of a stretch in the aggregates. The final product has also been discovered to be more resistant to the wear and tear the road goes through. Compared to asphalt, this was much better, and when they are able to find a more efficient method of collecting discarded masks, the mixture could also be a lot cheaper.

Li and his team formulated the cost-analysis for the new mixture. They found that at $26 per ton, the RCA came out to actually half the cost of mining new materials from quarries and about a third of the cost of shipping used masks that have accumulated in the landfills.


The improvements and new scaling would be perfect for infrastructure projects, especially the larger ones. One perfect example would be Washington. This progressive state actually has one of the worst roads in the world. The state has a need to address the repairs and the mixture would be cost-efficient for them. If the damaged roads would be repaired with Li’s RCA/mask mixture, they would be able to reuse 10 million masks. The landfills would be spared from millions of tons of trashed masks.

Right now, Fast Company says that Li and his team are in search of private partners and governments who are willing to test out the new mixture of tests on a large scale.

 

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