Localization: Cidade Universitária, Ilha do Fundão campus, at Horácio Macedo Avenue 2.030, Bloco J, 21.941-598 Rio de Janeiro, RJ.
Responsible: Profª. Leila Lea Yuan Visconte, Profª. Elen Beatriz Acordi Vasques Pacheco, Profª. Ana Lúcia Nazareth da Silva

Who are we?

The Laboratory Núcleo de Excelência em Reciclagem e Desenvolvimento Sustentável - NERDES – was created as a response to the increased social concern with the future of the next generation. Today it is already felt the lack of planification to manage the use of our resources. At NERDES issues related to sustainable development in the polymer area are worked out by the development of several projects, some still at the academic level and other in response to interests of companies and agencies.

Location

NERDES is located at the Instituto de Macromoléculas Professora Eloisa Mano (IMA), which is part of the Centro de Tecnologia (CT) in the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). IMA is located at Cidade Universitária, Ilha do Fundão campus, at Horácio Macedo Avenue 2.030, Bloco J, 21.941-598 Rio de Janeiro, RJ.

The work team

NERDES working team comprises DSc professors with background in polymer science and technology and solid engagement in processing area. Other members also make part os this team as DSc researchers, MSc researchers, technical staff, scientific initiation interns and master and doctoral students.

Activities

Education: as a laboratory at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, NERDES main activity is education. The NERDES team of professors teaches classes at undergraduate and graduate levels, supervising master, doctoral and postdoctoral students, and extension work;

Research: projects supported by development agencies are carried out in partnership with other institutions and of interest to companies;

Extension: development of projects to meet the needs of the society in general, such as training courses for the decommissioning of Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipments;

Services: “on demand” courses, tests and analyzes are carried out.

Infraestructure

NERDES has a laboratorial structure of equipment used in experimental classes for graduate students, also to provide services and to support the development of theses and projects. Among them, there is injection, thermoforming, extrusion and rotomolding processing equipment, most of which on pilot scale. The equipment infrastructure was assembled from resources obtained with the development of projects coordinated by NERDES professors. In addition to these equipments, we also have:

• Roll mixer;
• HAAKE torque rheometer;
• Melt flow index - MFI;
• Bench extruder;
• Pelletizer;
• Knife mill;
• Disintegrator;
• Agglutinator;
• Hydraulic presses;
• Universal testing machine;
• Heat deflection temperature – HDT;
• Curometer;
• Rubber processing analyzer – RPA;
• Flammability analyzer;
• Permeability analyzer;
• Viscosimeter;
• Thermogravimetric analyzer – TGA;
• Aging chamber;
• Mass spectrometer;
• Molds, greenhouses, screw elements, refrigeration units, and others.

Objectives

Some of NERDES objectives are:

• To show the potential of sustainability (social, environmental and technical) of materials recycling through technological development with minor
  impacts;
• To obtain products with greater added value;
• To environmentally evaluate technologies by Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, and Reverse Logistic;
• To stimulate environmental education.

How everything started

Research on plastic recycling started at IMA in 1990, under the coordination of Professor Eloisa Mano, and due to its pioneering character, was Brazil’s first regular line of research in the area, at the university level, generating, already in 1993, two master's dissertations on the subject Plastic Wood, which initially used domestic waste as raw material. Since then, the research group has expanded its research interests in the area. Subsequently, the plastic wood was developed from post-consumed lubricating oil packaging, to attend the PUBLIC NOTICE MCT - RBT / FINEP / CT - PETRO 01/2003, FINEP Agreement No. 01/04/1037/00 (PLASTIC WOOD MANUFACTURE FROM POST-CONSUMED LUBRICATING OILS). Plastic wood has great potential for application in civil construction, replacing natural wood.

In addition to plastic wood, patents on rubber regeneration, powdered varnishes from recycled materials, gels from cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL), thermoplastic rubber from polymeric residues, recycling of car bumpers and fruits packaging from sustainable composites have been deposited.

From then on, the installation of a laboratory scale recycler was consolidated in 2009 within the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, which has been expanding its research, projects and training in the recycling area. The Recycler looks towards to raise the society awareness, in special the university students on the importance of recycling from the results and products generated. As an example the manufacture of small objects from plastics discarded at CT/UFRJ Selective Collecting Program. The plastics are collected and forwarded to NERDES where they are trialed, washed, dried and remolded into rulers and small trash containers

It was found that, by distributing these artifacts, CT/UFRJ community started to show a higher concern related to a more conscious disposal of used plastic cups in the correct selective collector. This new behavior was reflected in the lower amount of water needed in the washing step, a reduction of 52% in relation to year 2009 when this washing water monitoring started.