Converting plastic waste into useful products
In their efforts to reduce the impact of PET plastics on the environment, a group of students from the Da Nang University of Science and Technology have come up with a solution to convert plastic waste into useful home items. Their excellent solution has won two prizes, namely Best Presentation and Best Poster Awards at the 2022 eProjects Innovation Showcase Contest which mostly focused on environmental pollution and waste management solutions. The contest was co-organised by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Dow Vietnam, under the framework of the USAID BUILD-IT and Dow Vietnam STEM Program.
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| Da Nang students won two awards at the 2022 eProjects Innovation Showcase contest for their PET recycling solution. Photo: T.L |
For the fourth year in a row, USAID’s Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) Alliance which is carried out by Arizona State University, have joined forces with the Dow Vietnam STEM Program to bring industry-linked applied projects in innovation, entrepreneurship, and research to undergraduates across Viet Nam.
Da Nang students showed how to recycle PET plastics and convert them into useful household products in the context of strong growth of the electronics sector in Viet Nam. Therefore, a large amount of PET wastes is generated from this sector while such wastes are disposed of in traditional methods such as landfilling and incineration. Da Nang students have come up with optimal solution in order to reduce the impact of PET plastics on the environment and turn them into useful products.
Da Nang students developed their prototypes through regular consultation with professional mentors, including Dr. Ngo Dinh Thanh, Dr. Ho Viet Thang, Dr. Pham Thi Doan Trinh, along those from Dow Vietnam. At the end, they sucessfully developed their effective solution for PET recycling and coverting them into useful household products, including home decor items.
In the future, Da Nang students’ project will be divided into 3 phases. The first stage will focus on further improving the mechanical properties of products made from recycled plastics, such as increasing the bearing capacity and durability of these products like tables and chairs. The next stage will focus on planning for mass production, including the process from the collection of PETwastes from electronics plants to the production of a finished product. The final stage will focus on conducting product marketing to find consumer markets.
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EProjects is an engineering innovation program during which faculty and industry mentors guide teams to address an industry-proposed problem statement by implementing a student-led project. During eProjects teams learn the hard and soft skills needed to become a professional engineer. Hard skills like designing, building, and testing a prototype and soft skills like team and project management.The program also helps students gain the confidence and capacity to lead engineering and to commercialize their solutions to the potential customers. The eProjects Innovation Showcase contest is part of USAID BUILD-IT and the Dow Vietnam Stem Programme which has been carried out for four years. The USAID BUILD-IT Alliance is a public-private partnership founded to support world-class engineering programs for work-ready graduates in Viet Nam. The Alliance has over 16 industry partners and 11 Vietnamese university partners. |
Reporting by THIEN LAM – Translating by H.L