Author(s)

H. Sakamoto, S. Kawabe & S. Itoh

Abstract

The fracture mechanics of glass bottles using the underwater shockwave technique and the recycling process by smashing the glass bottles are discussed. The proposed smashing process can decrease the recycle cost by small grain sizing of the \“cullet”, which is the crashed glass fragments, and by overlapping the washing process with the recycle pre-processing. In this study, using the commercial beer bottle, the relationship between the \“cullet” size and various explosive conditions, i.e. distance, amount, speed and configuration, was clarified. Keywords: glass-cullet, underwater shockwave, high-speed fracture, recycle. 1 Introduction Today, bottles made of glass are used voluminously as containers of water, alcoholic drinks and medicine. Many of these glass bottles are washed after use and reused as returnable bottles or recycled as the raw material of glass bottles, which is called \“the cullet” and is crushed to small fragments. In order to reuse or recycle them, it is necessary to wash the inside of the bottles regardless of melting or not. As the shape of the bottle varies greatly, it takes a lot of time to wash the inside and it is difficult to do this operation automatically. Therefore, recycling the bottles as the raw material is costly and this recycling method becomes the lower coefficient of utilization in comparison with the reusing as a returnable bottle. Almost all bottles used for medicine end up in landfill sites. In this study, the authors paid attention to the recycling process by the smashing of glass bottles and discussed the smashing technique using

Keywords

glass-cullet, underwater shockwave, high-speed fracture, recycle.