The Plastiki was an awesome undertaking of incredible team work, audacious ideas, and pure determination. The team was able to develop a system to produce the entire boat’s skeleton framework from self-reinforced PET material, something never done before. This unique process is a new and smarter way to produce composite structures. For example traditional composites of the past have relied primarily on itchy fiberglass or carbon fiber encapsulated with toxic thermo-set resins such as epoxy (which also contains a large amount of bisphonel-A) . Our new method is a much safer alternative with easier processing requirements.
The Seretex materials are unique in two ways. First is the fact that it is a mono-polymer material. In other words it uses PET as both the reinforcement/strength layers as well as its matrix/bonding layers. This is achieved by slightly altering the physical characteristics of the PET without destroying its ability to remain in the PET recycling chain. Second this new material composite falls into the class of “thermo-plastic” materials instead of traditional “thermo-set” materials such as Epoxy. The difference for those who don’t know has to do with the process ability of the material. A thermo-set material such as Epoxy is mixed as a liquid and then permanently hardens to never be worked with again. Mix this with fiberglass and it becomes a useless material incapable of being recycled at its end of life.
Unlike epoxy a thermo-plastic material such as Seretex can be melted and re-melted many times. It allows the processing of the material flexibility because the material does not suddenly harden. Seretex has no shelf-life and can be processed repeatedly or even recovered from processing mistakes.
For more information about Plastiki go to
 www.theplastiki.com
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