I do the "hot staples" trick but I just use wire scraps and a soldering iron

This is covered in the article.

> We have carried out ten [thermomechanical] recycling cycles, and the epoxy has not lost any significant mechanical strength in the process

Chemical dissolving is only needed for carbon fiber composite. 90% of the resin was cited to be recoverable in this process.

I don’t know of any recycled polymer that doesn’t have at least somewhat compromised durability. Doesn’t mean it’s useless though

“The raw materials for epoxy resin production are today largely petroleum derived, although some plant derived sources are now becoming commercially available (e.g. plant derived glycerol used to make epichlorohydrin).”

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoxy

if they were obtained from non-fossil sources - but they weren’t, and the industry hasn’t switched and may never switch to plant based.

Also, what you said isn’t necessarily true even with plant based resins. What is the carbon cost of producing new resin vs recycling old?

There’s more to the impact of a material than the carbon stored inside it.

Yes, we were all duped by the recycling industry. No that doesn’t make all attempts at recycling a lie.

we are having an existential marine crisis due to the millions of tons of essentialy non recyclable "plastic" bieng dumped in our oceans, a fully recyclable alternative is worth trillions over the long haul. The switch will happen when a viable alternative is discovered, and a material that has inherent value will be a key requirement. If this new epoxy is a true engineered material that is suitable for say, vacume infusion molding of things like wind turbine blades,and smaller ships, and injection molding of buckets and computer chasis etc, etc , then it will become universal for those things.

An adjacent design validation question on a green chip factory and product design:

Will Phytic acid in Lignin-Vitrimer encase burning CNT carbon nanotubes in a phosphorous char cage, this preventing health hazards and combustion?

This says "phosphorous epoxy".

FR4 silicon PCBs are N-doped and P-doped.

While this is just a press release its about the academic paper, which is open access https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138589472...

It doesnt seem like any of the authors are making this commercially currently

EMPA is not a company, it’s a Swiss government agency. Maybe you should apply the grain of salt to your own priors too…

When a general study was made back in the 1970s of the limits of substitutability and recyclability of mineral resources, it was found phosphorus likely dictates the minimum amount of mining needed in steady state. It occurs at an average concentration of about 0.1% in the continental crust.

I worry just a bit about this in reference to LFP batteries.

I think that was a core plot point of a series of books by Niven I think. Humans are on a planet that has almost no phosphorus or maybe potassium in it's biosphere. Humans have to take it artificially by sprinkling a special salt on every meal. But it's very limited and expensive and so a significant part of the population are mentally handicapped to lesser or greater degrees, generation after generaion.

Ah, Destiny's Road, and it was Potassium.

"...dooming humanity to a slow mental extinction."

Great.

I can't imagine this approaches how much is used in agriculture for fertilizer.