“We found a material which is like a glue stick, called PVOH or polyvinyl alcohol. One of the criteria is it has to be food safe, if kids are licking the product, and it has to be fully biodegradable in the sewage system,” he adds.
Wangsaputra realized that PVOH could be the key to removing a bottleneck in e-waste recycling — transportation, which raises costs and creates carbon emissions. That’s in addition to the fact that most e-waste isn’t even recycled. Removing the plastic casing at home would be beneficial, he thought.
The idea has funding from the UK government and the four are working on the project at London’s Royal College of Arts, going through a series of iterations. “We are creating something that is water soluble, but also waterproof. The challenge was making a (waterproof) coating that is biodegradable, but also very resistant.”
This coating, lucky jet игра also made of a plastic polymer, is only applied to the outer shell, making the product water resistant up to five meters for 30 minutes, which covers accidental spills or humid weather. “But once you take off just one screw from the product, that creates a leak. That’s when you submerge it in water. Five to six hours later, it will dilute, and what’s left is milky water and the most valuable parts of the product (the electronics),” says Wangsaputra. The milky water can simply be poured into a sink or toilet, and Wangsaputra says it will further decompose in the sewage system.
The first commercial application for Aquafade is likely to be as the casing for LED wristbands worn at concerts: “After just one use, thousands of people just throw them away. They are simple to build, and we’re in talks with one of the largest providers of these wristbands,” says Joon Sang Lee.
Next up is a mini PC made with an Aquafade shell that will be released on the Pentaform website. But the duo are thinking about applications beyond electronics: “It would work for any product that is injection molded, or any plastic that is a hard shell, so even luggage, car interiors, watches, sunglasses, even furniture” says Wangsaputra, hinting at the possibility of licensing Aquafade to third parties.
For now, Aquafade is double the cost of regular ABS plastic, which it would replace. But Wangsaputra says that that amounts to 5 to 10% of the overall cost of an electronic product, and that mass production will make it cheaper.
‘The devil is in the details’
Peter Edwards, emeritus professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, who’s not involved with Aquafade, calls it “an interesting development,” but wonders whether the dissolved plastic will persist in the environment and ultimately end up as microplastic. The Aquafade team acknowledge that they have not yet fully investigated how the solution would biodegrade in the long term.