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Water glass from recycled fiberglass

The lack of fiberglass recycling leads to abandoned boats, but using Michigan's salt enables new recycling techniques.
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www.carbonfreeearth.com
About this idea
Cabon Free Earth proposes a new way to make eco-friendly detergents and geochemical activator for eco-cement: low-temperature solvolysis of abandoned boats and even decommissioned wind turbine blades. These sodium metasilicates are made from combining activated silica with sodium hydroxide and wastewater. These everyday chemical materials are presently manufactured overseas by heating silica-quartz sand in kilns to over 2,500 degrees. Because the silica in recovered fiberglass is already activated, we can make sodium metasilicates at temperatures below 500 degrees, saving energy and CO2. This process uses acids and bases generated by Michigan-produced salts to digest epoxy resins in the fiberglass, turning the remaining silica into hydradated sodium metasilicates, known as water-glass.
Impact
Currently 96% of sodium metasilicates are produced overseas, mainly in China and Belgium. US sales of this product grew 60% from 2024 to 2025, responding to new uses as an alkali activator for alternative cements. Michigan has one of the largest brine and salt geologic reservoirs in the world, producing over a million tons of road salt each year. We hope to harness this resource to produce a domestic industry for water glass from the recycling of boat hulls and the growing demand for the recycling of decommissioned wind turbine blades. We are partnering with equipment manufacturer JH Fletcher to field-test mobile shredding equipment to take care of the thousands of abandoned boats in Michigan, while readying ourselves for the growing need of wind turbine blade recycling.
What I'll do with $5,000
We need to test the sodium metasilicates we produce in our small-scale fiberglass digestion reactor for use as detergents and geochemical activator. This will require ASTM D501 (Standard Test Methods of Sampling and Chemical Analysis of Alkaline Detergents) and ASTM D502 (Standard Test Method for Particle Size of Soaps and Other Detergents) and ASTM D1172 (Standard Guide for pH of Aqueous Solutions of Soaps and Detergents) testing by a 3rd party lab, Alliance Analytical Lab in Grand Rapids. Our goal is to produce an eco-friendly boat cleaning detergent that can be biodegradable in water, without affecting fish and invertebrates, turning into dissolved silica that eventually turns into sand particles. We also want to work with Livonia-based RTI Laboratories and Grand Rapids-based Materials Testing Consultants on ASTM D537 (Standard Specification for Sodium Metasilicate) and ASTM C114 (Standard Test Methods for Chemical Analysis of Hydraulic Cement): selling the water glass we produce as geochemical activator for alternative low-CO2 cement will be critical to developing a sales pipeline while we attempt to commercialize the boat cleaning detergent made from recycled boats.
Quick Bio
I am an experienced environmental scientist with 10+ years of research experience in sustainable chemistry and bioremediation. Lately I've pursued the circular economy problem of fiberglass recycling.
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