Try to catch “The Green” on the Sundance Channel. It’s a good showplace for all that’s happening in the environmental world. The other night I caught a segment showcasing Richard Wool, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. Delaware, as the professor states, is number one in soybeans and chickens so why not find a way to use all those feathers and soybean oil? So he and his students ground up a bunch of chicken feathers, compressed them with soybean oil to create a board, a circuit board.
Normally circuit boards are made from petroleum by products and copper. According to Dave Jones, an associate director in the Waste Management Division of the U.S. EPA on Pub Med Central website: “[T]here are both manufacturing and end-of-life issues to be considered: ‘You have the issue of the consumption of copper and petroleum products to begin with, and anytime you’re dealing with the extraction and use of virgin resources, you have the potential for incredible environmental impact,’ he says. ‘Then you have to consider what’s added to the petrochemical product to make the board—typically something like chlorine.’”
So anything Wool comes up with that will utilize the some 3 billion tons of waste feathers produced every year across the country, not just Delaware, is a good thing. Since chicken feathers are light, airy, they have a low dialectic constant, which means feathers are stable for a wide range of frequencies. My electricity teacher at Community College would be proud of me now since I still remember some stuff, especially all the algebra involved, but I digress. To put it simply, electric current likes airy conductor material like the hollow feathers. It can travel faster.
Wool created a prototype board out of the feathers and soybean oil that worked on the first try. He is now collaborating with none other than Tyson, which I reported not long ago was involved in collaboration with Conoco Phillips Oil to manufacture bio fuels from chicken grease. If Tyson keeps up the pace, it won’t be long before they utilize all parts of the bird so nothing is wasted.
Environmentally, it looks like we’re progressing from “Chicken Littles” to chicken lots. As Wool put it, there is literally no material out there that should be taken off the table as having potential to replace petroleum and it’s by products.
Check out the Sundance video by Prof. Wool: sundance-channel-video-big-ideas-for-a-small-planet-gadgets-clip-11
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1247399
http://www.sundancechannel.com/videos/230321401
Tags: electronics
Current circuit board types are phenolic for the lower-grade boards, and fiberglas for higher-grade including those that are ruggedized for military and industrial use and for things like the Panasonic Toughbook. Those boards that are ruggedized also have a clear coating similar to polyurethane on a wooden floor, which totally covers the board and its components to prevent dust, dirt, grime and oils from coming into contact with the board itself. There is definitely a need for ‘greening’ of this technology as the recycling of these parts has created huge piles of old boards in Asian countries where kids spend days at a time stripping things off to sell to smelters and foundries. No, it’s not a safe process and never has been. Those of us who have been around electronics for a while (for me it’s been over 30 years) welcome the kinds of research you’re writing about here.
BTW, in case you hadn’t noticed I moved my blog. I’ll get a link to your blog in my new one ASAP.
Hey Dave, good to hear from ya. Yeah I’d like a link.
I’ve noticed the shiny coating on boards. So it’s like polyurethane? I’ve read about the electronics junk piles, and I’ve read about investing in companies that recycle the stuff. Good investment there. That’s still a growing business. Now with companies cutting back, there might be greater demand for the recycled stuff I would think.
Isn’t it amazing what American ingenuity can come up with though? Like Wool said it just proves not to take anything off the table as far as materials.