Todd Gillespie

Retired Mechanical Engineer, Ornamental Horticulture. Enjoy science, space, history, archaeology.

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@engineers_feed That’s why I’m gonna spend all my retirement

[World of Engineering @engineers_feed]

Three of the most common plastics: polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) make up a huge share of the plastic ending up in landfills and the ocean.

Mechanical recycling is costly and usually yields lower-grade material. Burning it pumps out CO₂. Most of it still just gets landfilled.

On 31 July 2026, a UCLA-led team (working with researchers in South Korea) published results on a chemical process that takes mixed, unsorted streams of those three plastics and turns them straight into high-purity hydrogen.

What stands out compared with earlier approaches:
•No sorting needed. Older plastic-to-fuel methods usually demanded clean, single-polymer feedstock. Sorting is expensive and often impractical at real scale. This one handles the mixed stream in one reactor.
•Much lower temperature. Conventional pyrolysis or steam gasification runs at 700–900 °C or higher. The new alkaline thermal treatment works hundreds of degrees cooler, which cuts the energy demand.
•Carbon stays put. Instead of being released as CO₂, most of the carbon ends up locked in solid carbonate (mainly sodium carbonate) plus some liquid residues. More than 75 % of the original carbon is captured that way.

The hydrogen comes out above 90 % pure and can go into fuel cells, industrial use, or pipelines.

Global plastic waste is roughly 400 million tonnes a year. Those hydrocarbon chains hold a lot of hydrogen. This chemistry unlocks a good fraction of it.

The remaining hurdle is the usual one: moving from lab batches to continuous industrial scale.

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@jonnajarian @deptulahasrage

[Varney & Co. @Varneyco]

One company is transforming abandoned buildings into A.I. hubs. Are thoughtful designs enough to garner community support? @MadisonAlworth gives us an inside look into an old printing plant that's turned into a new data center in Kansas City!
WATCH NOW:

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@WilliamShatner Glad you are sticking around Captain. Looking forward to enjoying your upcoming endeavours.

[Sports Patriot @SportsPatriotUS]

Uh oh…

The players gaining popularity aren’t the ones the WNBA’s preferred narrative was built around.

Sophie Cunningham just gained more than one million followers in 30 days. That will not sit well with the league’s old guard.

Brace yourself... the manufactured Sophie Cunningham controversy could arrive any day now.

[World of Engineering @engineers_feed]

On July 16, 2026, researchers announced a living plastic, engineered using bacteria, that completely self-destructs in six days when triggered.

Standard plastics take 400–1,000 years to degrade.
When they do, they fragment into microplastics that infiltrate soil, water, and human tissue.

This material does something different:
The bacteria embedded in the plastic are genetically programmed to produce enzymes that digest the polymer from the inside out.
Trigger the process with a specific chemical signal or UV light, and the entire structure breaks down in less than a week.

No microplastics. No toxic residue. Just water and CO₂.

Current target applications:
• Single-use packaging (coffee cups, food containers, medical wrappers)
• Agricultural films that need to degrade after one growing season
• Medical devices designed for temporary use inside the body

The engineering challenge: keeping the bacteria dormant until triggered.
Premature activation would be catastrophic for shelf life.
The team solved this with a genetic switch, a repressor protein that keeps the degradation enzyme inactive until the correct signal is received.

Plastics weren't an engineering mistake.
They were the right material with no end-of-life plan.
Now they have one.

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@CarlBovisNature Cornish hen

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@SenRickScott Nixon tried this in the 70s and it was repealed. Go to Standard time! Central, South America and the Caribbean are on Standard time.

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@SenTomCotton do some kind of amendment to the DST bill to go to Standard time permanently when it changes to it on November.

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@michaeljknowles Good. Got to Standard time like Central, South America and the Caribbean.

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@FoxNews Change to Standard time in Nov and be done with it. Central, South and the Caribbean are all on Standard time and do not change.

[FITSNews @fitsnews]

🔴 @LindseyGrahamSC
It's Darline... S.C. governor @HenryMcMaster will tap the late Lindsey Graham's sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to fill the final six months of his term in office. https://t.co/9qjo93ArTm

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

I ok with the need for more data centers just not with the current design. These huge Costco size building, requiring huge amount of energy and water are bad for nearby communities and countrysides. Go smaller scale like a mesh. Nivida suggest homes lend out small data units the size of an outdoor HVAC units. Pay the owner a monthly lease. Have thousands everywhere.

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@NUCLRGOLF I’m not good enough to care…

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@lippyent I had a blue one. Stingray

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@saniyafatma1278 Can opener

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@defense_civil25 Only way to end the war is take out the radicals. Involve the exiled Prince and neighboring Islamic nations

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@deptulahasrage It’s the billionaire running the shots

[Todd Gillespie @tgill1961]

@ThrillaRilla369 Sorry no