Abstract: The plastic waste crisis is one of the great global challenges facing modern society. In this talk, we discuss a new technology designed to recycle mixed plastic waste, converting it into new, virgin-quality plastic feedstocks, clean, low-sulphur fuels, and other useful products. We also introduce Positron Emission Particle Tracking (PEPT), a technique which allows the interior dynamics of large, optically-opaque systems such as these to be imaged with high spatial and temporal resolution, and explore how this technique – combined with advanced numerical modelling techniques – is being used to help optimise this nascent recycling method, and thus bring a promising concept toward industrial reality.
Biography: Gaining his PhD in Nuclear Physics at the University of Birmingham in 2015, Dr. Windows-Yule has worked as a researcher in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and in Chemical and Bioengineering at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, before returning to the University of Birmingham as an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering. This diverse and highly multi-disciplinary experience has armed Dr. Windows-Yule with a variety of experimental and numerical techniques, from PEPT and PTV to DEM, CFD and MP-PIC, which he applies to a variety of scientific and industrial problems.
His current research focuses on three main areas:
- Addressing climate change, in particular through the development of novel plastic and heavy metal recycling techniques and the production of novel biofuels the advancement and optimisation of industrial process equipment
- The optimisation of industrial process equipment, working with industrial partners including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Mondelēz, Procter and Gamble, and Unilever
- The development of novel positron imaging methodologies, and the application of these both to the above and other important contemporary problems.