Development of a Method and System for Recycling Polystyrene Production Waste

Currently, the consumption of natural resources is important for humanity. Therefore, reducing the production of production waste not only saves natural resources, but also increases the profit of the manufacturer. When producing polystyrene powder, the waste produced is a coarse powder with a wide range of particle sizes and irregular geometry. It is possible to obtain low-grade products from waste, such as disposable tableware, industrial containers, Petri dishes, etc. Manufacturers are interested in developing new processing methods to use waste materials to produce high-quality products. The purpose of the work is to study the possibility of using polystyrene production waste in selective laser sintering processes. The method we are developing for processing polystyrene-based polymer powder allows us to avoid the use of additional chemical exposure, and to select the optimal operating mode for a selective laser sintering installation with the resulting processed material. It is planned to introduce this method into the field of materials processing for additive manufacturing.