The quality of recyclates is seen as too low. Improvements are possible by using additives, as was shown by the exchanges during the Forum Plastic Recyclates.

Quite clearly, the central theme of this year’s conference  was additives for recycling materials.

16:9

Streifinger, Florian

Recycling

Umweltmanagement

Kunststoff Werkstoffe

Kunststoff-Recycling

Kunststoffverarbeitung: Verfahren

Kunststoff-Aufbereitung

Kunststoff-Rezyklat

Additive

Kreislaufwirtschaft

Additives Are Decisive

The quality of recyclates can be improved very well by means of suitable additives. An overview of the variety of products and their suppliers.

Overview: Additives for Plastic Recyclates

Stabilisatoren

Vitamins for the Circular Economy

The stabilization of used plastics is costly. Online measurement during compounding allows for stabilization directly in production.

Plastic waste often has a very different stabilizer content. This must be precisely determined in the recycling process. 

Determined Online, Recyclate Wins

Metal-effect pigments make for attractive designs, but they cause problems with recycling. These can be resolved with a special silver pigment.

Plastic products with a metal-effect finish are attractive. However, the effect pigments make recycling difficult.

Pigmente

Farbstoffe und Pigmente

Effektpigmente

A Silver Lining for Recycling

Christian Schiller’s goal is to turn the phrase “plastic waste is recyclable material” into reality. His tool of choice: digitalization.

Digitale Transformation

Wirtschaft

Innovationen und neue Technologie

Start up

Unternehmen und Unternehmer

Ehrhardt, Melanie

“We See Our Work as Basic  Digitalization“

In general, recycled chocolate molds of PC do not meet the food contact requirements. A new recycling strategy is to provide a remedy.

Polycarbonate is frequently used for molds in chocolate production.

Polycarbonat

Thermoplaste

The Chocolate Side of Polycarbonate

RCS Plastics processes PET flakes into high-quality regranulate for preform and beverage bottle manufacturers. To ensure the required food quality of the recycled material, the company relies on Sikora technology for the quality control of the rPET flakes and pellets.

Cedric Steeg, Employee in Quality Assurance, holds material sample in front of the Puritiy Concept V.

Qualitätssicherung

Polyethylenterephthalat

Check Food Quality of Recyclates

Solvay and Hegen Partner to Bring the First Baby Bottle Made with Recycled Content to the Market.

In the future, Hegen will manufacture baby bottles from mass-balanced PPSU recyclate.

Messe Fakuma

kunststoffe-international.com

Recyclates Now Also for Baby Bottles

Using the latest technological advances in flake sorting helps bridge the gap between supply and demand.

Mixed plastic waste: With about 180.5 million t polyolefins make up the lion‘s share of annual plastics production.

Quantum Leap in Recyclates Quality

Plastic recycling: Kreyenborg uses infrared technology for the reduction of unpleasant odors in plastics.

Everything fresh: the two-stage IR-Fresh process removes unpleasant odors from recyclates.

Infrarotstrahler

Kunststoffverarbeitung: Maschinen und Komponenten

Materialhandling

IR-Fresh Minimizes Odors in PCR Granulates

The use of TPE materials with recycled content increases the sustainability of vehicles. They are also used more and more in the interior.

The selection of high-quality recyclate enables their use in demanding automotive applications.  

Recyclate Reduce the CO2 Footprint in Seals and Interior Applications

Thermoplastische Elastomere

Soft, Elastic and Recycled

Automakers have formulated ambitious plans for their vehicles. We discussed this topic with Frank Schumann from Trinseo.

Batterien

Energiespeicherung

Elektromobilität

Mobilität

Lichttechnik

“Nothing Speaks against the Use of Recyclates for Demanding Components”

Material and manufacturing process optimized, CO2 saved: recycled wash cap from Pöppelmann K-Tech closes the loop.

Material and manufacturing process optimized, closed loop: Recycled wash cap for the automotive industry. 

Spritzgießen

Schaumspritzgießen

Sustainable Wash Cap

The Alpla Group can look back on a successful financial year 2022 in spite of the crisis. Sales of 5.1 billion euros exceeded the previous year’s figure by 27.5 percent.

The packaging specialist will continue to expand its production capacity in injection molding over the coming years.

Verpackungsmittel aus Kunststoffen

Kunststoffverarbeitung

Verpackungstechnik

Logistik

Alpla Achieves Sales Record

Santa Barbara County’s Resource Center efficiently sorts both municipal solid waste and single stream using the same circuit with Tomra‘s Autosort units to successfully reduce landfilling.

The Santa Barbara County Resource Center converts commercial and residential waste into recyclables by recovering recyclable materials, converting organics into landscape nutrients, and generating renewable energy in the process.

Sortierer

Quick-Change Mixed Waste Processing

Conference Minutes of “Forum Plastic Recyclates”

A growing number of companies and industrial sectors would like to use recyclates for their products. However, the application is frequently still confronted with considerable difficulties. And the extension of recycling to other fields and sectors also poses new questions. An overview of the current status and associated technical solutions was provided in conference “Forum Plastic Recyclates” at the end of March.

Recycling of plastic waste is now seen by politics as well as the industry as an important issue for environmental protection and more sustainability. Clear signals for this are regulations – e.g. of the EU Commission to increase the recycling of packaging and boost the use of recyclates – and the importance of circular economy as highlighted by industrial associations such as Plastics Europe Deutschland, an association of plastics producers. Consequently, the will is there, but implementation still proves to be difficult. There is a lack of necessary infrastructure for collecting plastic waste, adequate processing capacities, recycling-compatible product design, and frequently, the quality of recyclate has room for improvement. An interesting overview of the main difficulties and possible solutions for the problems was provided during the “Forum Plastic Recyclates” hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF) on March 24, 2022.

A good summary of the present situation was given by the forum‘s chairman Professor Dr. Rudolf Pfaendner from the Fraunhofer LBF in his opening lecture. He pointed out the growing interest of consumers and therefore also of manufacturers for an increased use of recycled materials. That is why recyclates are meanwhile being used in an increasing number of products. Simultaneously, however, there is still a need for an adequate recycling infrastructure. According to Dr. Pfaendner, the growing interest is not limited to Europe, but is a global phenomenon. Presently, two thirds of the patents in the recycling business come from China.

Ton Emans, president of the European association “Plastics Recyclers Europe“, took a clear stand for recycling-compatible design. In his view, significant advances in recycling will not be the result of innovations in recycling technologies, but mainly due to corresponding product design. He therefore also sees a commitment for producers of plastic products to focus more intensely on the recyclability of their products. “Companies must concentrate far more on design for recycling, also when selecting the polymers used”, he said. Furthermore, to increase the recycling rates, better harmonization and standardization of waste collection is necessary in Europe.

Previously, low quality was a frequent argument against a more widespread use of recyclates. But quality can be increased significantly by means of additives. Which improvements are achievable in polyolefins such as polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) was explained by Dr. Oliver Reich from BASF. The chemical company investigated how the molecular weight of the polymers changes after several recycling cycles, and which effect this has on the recyclate‘s properties and their processability.

Accordingly, investigations showed that PP as well as PE require stabilization by means of additives. With unstabilized PP, for example, the melt volume flow rate already increases significantly after just a few recycling cycles, whereby the material exits from the necessary processing window. However, if it is stabilized with additives, up to three times as many recycling cycles are possible before it cannot be processed further. But according to Dr. Reich, stabilization is not a cure-all. Primarily, the long-term temperature stability of the additives must be observed. Furnace aging tests by BASF had shown that also sufficiently stabilized materials degrade over time, thereby decreasing the effect of the additives. This point is particularly important if polymers are to pass through several recycling cycles. Nonetheless, as Dr. Reich pointed out, the investigations revealed a decisive point: “Without additives, a circular economy cannot be achieved.”

The significance of additives for improving recyclate quality was also underlined by Dr. Matthias Bruch, innovation and product manager for plastic additives at Brüggemann GmbH. In his view, there are mainly three points that create large problems with recycled plastics: the different additives and fillers contained, contaminations such as traces of metals, sand, and organic compounds like inks and adhesives, plus damage during processing caused by oxidation or degradation of the polymer chains. As a remedy for the latter, Brüggemann has developed a repair technology for recyclates.

The remedy involves additives that compensate the damage inflicted on polymers during processing. Currently, the company offers these additives for PE and PP. According to Dr. Bruch, analyses show that e.g. melt volume flow rate of correspondingly additivated plastics only increased slightly even after several extrusion cycles. Moreover, their tensile strength and their elastic modulus remain constant for a far longer period. Also the effects of heat aging arise much later. And compared with previous stabilizers, the new additives partially increase the performance of recyclates more than twofold, he added.

But additives are not only helpful for recycling – sometimes they also prove to be a hindrance, as explained by Dr. Andreas Mäurer from the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging (IVV), and Jörg Hamann from the plant builder EPC Engineering and Technology. This is e.g. the case with plastic products that are in use for a very long time, such as components in the automotive field and the building industry. In the past, for example, insulating panels made of expanded polystyrene (EPS) were frequently treated with hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) to ensure adequate flame proofing. However, use of this additive has been mostly banned since 2013. Therefore, plastics containing it cannot simply be returned to the recycling loop.

One possibility for removing HBCD from insulating panels involves solvent-based recycling processes. Hereby, a solvent is used to extract the required polymer from the plastic waste, subsequently cleaned and then precipitated. The plastics recovered in this way can then be reused for making new products. As the polymer is not depolymerized by the process, solvent-based processes are classified as mechanical recycling. A corresponding process has been developed by the Fraunhofer IVV and the CreaCycle company.

Fraunhofer-Institut für Betriebsfestigkeit und Systemzuverlässigkeit LBF Bereich Kunststoffe

https://www.lbf.fraunhofer.de

Ausgabenartikel

Additives can solve quality problems with recycled plastics. With the IrgaCycle product range, BASF has introduced versions, with which e.g. processability and long-term thermal stability can be improved.

KU 5-22_Rezyklattagung - Hauptartikel

issue 07/2023

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