Farukh Farukh - Plastic waste transformed into prosthetic limbs and house bricks

Research at De Montfort University is showing how recycled waste plastic can be used to produce prosthetic limbs and create plastic bricks for use in housebuilding.

Professor Farukh Farukh is a leading world expert in recycling and upcycling materials and at the forefront of addressing plastic waste to combat climate change as part of SDG 13.

The crafting of artificial limbs from recycled plastic water bottles is innovative and improves accessibility to prosthetic devices while mitigating the environmental impact of single-use plastics.

It is a solution that offers cost-effectiveness to healthcare providers, potentially saving substantial funds while reducing the ecological footprint of discarded single-use plastic bottles.

In his latest research, the prosthetic sockets based on this concept were developed in collaboration with BMVSS in India. The initial field trial has been successful with the feedback from patients particularly praising the comfort of the socket.

After follow-up grants from the Royal Academy of Engineering, work has taken place to further improve the technology as the socket development time was still lengthy. After various trials and testing using different techniques, a solution has now been developed using microwave heating technology to cure the sockets within an hour.

This technique is ready to be implemented in lower and middle-income economies and has already been used in India.

Farukh has also pioneered using novel bricks made from domestic plastic waste, which out-perform the traditional clay bricks with their insulation properties.

He said: “This development is a substantial stride towards constructing more energy-efficient buildings, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and reinforcing climate resilience.”

Following laboratory-based testing of these innovative lattice-based bricks, Farukh developed mathematical models known as scaling laws to predict the thermal efficiency of these bricks.

These scaling laws not only assist in forecasting brick efficiency but also facilitate the design of bricks of specific sizes with the most optimised lattice structure and cell dimensions.

These special bricks were produced at an industrial scale, taking the form of panels measuring 1m x 1m, using a specialized technique. The decision to increase the size of the bricks in the form of panels was driven by the need to assess their suitability for retrofitting existing buildings, especially in Europe.

The lattice-based panels are being utilised to construct a model house in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in partnership with the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO), a governmental agency.

This model house will provide real-life field data on the panels' efficiency in an arid climate, characterised by extremely hot temperatures in the summer and cooler temperatures in the winter.

Both of these projects were jointly led by Dr Karthikeyan Kandan (Associate Professor) at DMU. The external partner in the prosthetic limb project was the University of Strathclyde.