Reuse of waste polystyrene foam to a binder in foundry VS Doroshenko, AA Stryuchenko Physico-Technological Institute of Metals and Alloys of NASU, Kiev Polystyrene (colloquially called more foam) has been widely used in the world as a material for packaging and food preservation. This fact underlines the hygienic properties of polystyrene, the material properties which practically do not change over time. Packages are often stored in Styrofoam meat, fish, frozen or fresh vegetables, and beverages. At present, almost all consumer electronics packaging made of polystyrene. Also, polystyrene is widely used in modern construction as insulation layer in thermal insulation systems of houses and other buildings, as well as capacitance vessels and pipelines. It is also used in foundries for obtaining models that are in contact with molten metal gasifier in obtaining castings of ferrous and nonferrous alloys. In fact, polystyrene can be found in many spheres of modern life.
After the packaging, or otherwise getting into the waste, Styrofoam has no use. He does not like other recyclable household waste, as it does not interact with water and not be biodegradable, these characteristics to its high stability and neutrality are turned into bad when you try to recycling. Expanded polystyrene can be burned like coal, firewood, etc., due to the fact that In the process of its destruction in large volumes are allocated very harmful (toxic) gases. Therefore, waste polystyrene foam accumulate in large quantities in the human environment, creating one of the complex environmental problems. Thus, only one in Japan based on data for 1998 used annually around 400 thousand tons of polystyrene packaging for fish products, food trays, packing of household electronic appliances. The Internet has many sites of attempts to recycle Styrofoam packing after crushing in the form of pellets, but this use is very limited. However, polystyrene can be cost effectively used for binders and adhesives, general purpose, including for the preparation of molding and core sand mixtures, coating molds to produce castings in ferrous and nonferrous alloys.