The University of Tokyo · Environmental Science
Professor Gjergj Dodbiba's research lab specializes in advanced materials processing and sustainable resource recovery, with a strong focus on innovative separation technologies for plastics and valuable elements from industrial by-products. The lab investigates triboelectrostatic and dry mechanical separation techniques—such as air table and tribo-cyclone systems—for efficient recycling of plastic waste and recovery of rare earth elements from coal fly ash. Their work emphasizes environmentally friendly, cost-effective solutions for circular economy applications, including the synthesis of biocompatible hydroxyapatite for biomedical uses. The research integrates principles from mineral processing, electrostatics, and materials chemistry to address pressing environmental and industrial challenges.
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In order to deal with the problems facing the plastics processing industry research, work is focused primarily on designing, developing and testing a variety of separation and sorting techniques able to recover plastics from wastes, which can be re‐used or re‐processed to form new products. In this regard, technologies developed in mineral processing can be of great help. Various techniques for separating plastics materials have been recently developed. These techniques can be divided in two mai
The objective of this study was to triboelectrostatically separate artificial plastic mixture of three kinds of components (i.e. ABS, PS and PP mixture). The mixture is charged by friction in tribo-cyclone. After a given period of time inside the tribo-cyclone, the charged plastic flakes fell down freely through a horizontal electric field into collection bins. The DC electric field of maximum 400 kV/m is created by using two parallel plate electrodes made of Cu and having a given cross-section
In this experimental work, artificial plastic mixture of two kinds of components (i.e. PET and PE mixture) is tribo‐electrostatically separated. The mixture is charged by friction in a tribo‐cyclone. After a certain residence time inside the tribo‐cyclone, the charged plastic flakes fall down freely through a horizontal electric field into collection bins. The DC electric field of up to 333 kV/m is created by using two plate electrodes made of Cu and having a given cross‐section configuration. T
The demand for novel, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly rare earth element and yttrium (REY) sources is essential. The recovery of REY and other valuable components from coal fly ash (CFA) may result in securing alternative resources, decreased disposal costs, and environmental protection, all of which may have positive effects. However, research on the recovery of REY from CFA is underway, and it is still necessary to assess its viability from an economic and environmental standpoint
The present research work studies the direct synthesis of hydroxyapatite (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2), via a heat-assisted precipitation technique based on the reaction between Ca2+, phosphate (PO4)3–, and (OH)− ions under highly alkaline conditions. An assessment carried out on the thermodynamics involved in the formation of hydroxyapatite (HAP) via precipitation reactions highlighted the favorability of using a high pH to perform HAP synthesis in terms of ΔGReaction and element speciation. On the basis o
The aim of the research presented in this article was to investigate separation performance of the air table when separating a binary mixture of plastics. Separation using the air table, i.e. a dry mechanical process that grades constituents of the mixture with differences in specific gravity, is employed for separation of the PVC/PP mixture. Moreover, the performance of the laboratory‐scale air table is improved by increasing the height of riffles laid on the porous deck. The separation tests i
Rapid industrialisation has led to an increase of the amount of heavy metals discharged into the environment. Generally speaking, removal of heavy metals from wastewater is usually achieved by physico-chemical processes, including chemical precipitation, ion exchange, electrochemical treatment, membrane technologies and adsorption to name a few (Kapoor and Viraraghavan 1995; Matheickal and Yu 1996, 1997, 1999; Ahluwalia and Goyal 2007). Each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages.
This paper examines separation of waste plastics obtained from automotive shredder operations. Thus, a mixture of three kinds of plastic components (i.e. acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), polypropylene (PP), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC)) is sorted by using dry techniques i.e. without using water and hazardous chemicals. The separation process is characterized by the utilization of properties of triboelectric charge and density. Considering the relative position in triboelectric series (TES)
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