Each year, billions of compact discs (CDs, CDr’s and DVDs) are produced, while millions of them are reaching our landfills and incinerators. Why are they not getting recycled? Because most people don’t know what to do with them! Please play your part in helping to save our environment by starting to recycle your old and unwanted discs today. It’s simple to set up your own compact disc recycling program in your home or office.
A Compact Disc is made from a 1.2 mm thick disc of almost pure polycarbonate plastic and weighs approximately 16 grams. The physical components are defined as--moving from the centre outwards--centre hole, first transition area, clamping area, second transition area, information area, rim. These are also identified as spindle hole, clamping ring, stacking ring, mirror band, data area, rim.
A thin layer of aluminium or, more rarely, gold is applied to the surface to make it reflective, and is protected by a film of lacquer. The lacquer is normally spin coated directly on top of the reflective layer. On top of that surface, the label print is applied. Common printing methods for CDs are screen-printing and offset printing.
The Policarbonate of the CD/DVD discs are an optical degree Policarbonate (arround 2.000 U$/Ton), so recycling this kind of polymer could be a great business. Also the recuperation of the aluminium, gold and silver could be interesting for this recycling industry.
The YouTube video show a simple process which can be made at home (taking the cautions of using strong acids). The video do not share the "magic liquid" but I made at home several tests and that liquid is Nitric Acid concentrated (HNO3).
A. A polycarbonate disc layer has the data encoded by using bumps.
B. A reflective layer reflects the laser back.
C. A lacquer layer is used to prevent oxidation.
D. Artwork is screen printed on the top of the disc.
E. A laser beam reads the polycarbonate disc, is reflected back, and read by the player.
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