INTERNSHIP AT INTERPLEX INDIA
After witnessing the magnitude of plastic scattered in the ocean, I decided to Intern at a Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) manufacturing plant. I wanted to explore the full supply chain of plastics, so I began my internship at Interplex's partner recycling plant and explored how bottles are sorted based on material and colour. I then went to the manufacturing plant that took the recycled PET (crushed into flakes) and used it in the production of several products. What I explored was the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of PET strap versus a property known as intrinsic viscosity (IV), which is dependent on the percentage of virgin PET and recycled PET. I arrived at a direct linear correlation between UTS and IV. The exploration highlighted the several factors IV is based on: bond length, greater the surface area and Van Der Waals forces.
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Furthermore, I looked at the manufacturing plant's energy consumption and wrote a detailed proposal on how they could switch to an entirely solar powered factory. I drew on concepts like optimisation using calculus, efficiency from physics, and cost/benefit from economics, to name a few.
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In addition to the technical papers, I also wrote on my experiences and summarised my entire internship journey. The photos below include pictures from both plants, and the technology I used to carry out my experiments and analyse my data
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If you would like to read the papers, please email me and I would be happy to send them to you.
 Plastic input |  Founders and Technicians |  UTS Machine |
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 Tensile Strength Data Example |  Recycling Plant Explanation |  Recycling Plant Machinery Explanation |
RESEARCH PROJECT
ON ISRO
AND
PLASTICS
Continuing with the theme of plastics, I wanted to see if there were better methods to aid in the collection of plastics. I reached out to the ex-DECU Director of ISRO - Dr. Vikram Desai and had multiple conversations with him on whether my idea was viable.
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Subsequently, I wrote a white paper on how Geostationary satellites could be used to identify plastic hotspots in the ocean using LIDAR Sensors and multispectral optical satellite data.
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If you would like to read the papers, please email me and I would be happy to send them to you.
 Plastic Hotspots Using Satellites (Source - European Space Agency) |  With Dr Desai after our discussion |
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