According to foreign media reports, several new recycling technologies are now being tested, which may give plastic products such as disposable food packaging, fiber-reinforced car parts and mattress foam polymers a second life, and become more and more new Just as good.
Plastic waste is an increasingly serious environmental problem. Europe produces about 60 million tons of plastic each year, but only 30% will be recycled. Of all the plastic waste produced, 79% will eventually be landfilled or thrown into the natural environment as garbage. However, as Europe began to transition to a circular economy, that is, at the end of the material's useful life, instead of being thrown away, improved plastic recycling began to play an important role in the circular economy.
A series of measures taken recently by the European Commission will help improve the sustainability of plastics. The plastic strategy adopted in 2018 aims to solve this problem by changing the design, use and recycling of plastic products. One of the key goals is that by 2030, 55% of plastic packaging can be recycled and reused. The environmental footprint of packaging is high: approximately 40% of plastics production is used for packaging and is usually discarded after use.
Packaging is usually made of several different types of plastics, so recycling is more challenging. Fresh foods such as meat and cheese usually have multiple layers of protection, such as lids, films and trays, which are not made of the same type of plastic. When processing different plastics, they need to be separated, because in the traditional recycling process, different plastics cannot be mixed together well. However, separation is time-consuming and expensive, so such items are usually not recyclable, or are considered impossible to recycle.
Fiber-reinforced composite materials face a similar fate. This type of plastic-based material, reinforced with glass or carbon fiber, can be used in a variety of automotive interior and exterior parts, from bumpers, textile covers to door panels. Because it is difficult to separate different materials, such materials are usually incinerated at the end of their lives.
However, now, there are new recycling technologies that can help. As part of the MultiCycle project, Dr. Bugnicourt and project partners extended a patented process called CreaSolv developed by the Fraunhofer Institute in Munich, Germany, which allows multi-layer packaging materials and fiber-reinforced Composite materials have been reborn again and again.
Using a solvent-based formula, different types of plastics and fibers can be extracted and dissolved in solvents to achieve the purpose of separation. Then, such polymers (long-chain molecules that make up plastic) are recovered from the solution in solid form, and then reshaped into plastic pellets, and the recovered fibers can also be reused.
So far, the process has shown better prospects than existing methods. In the traditional mechanical recycling method, plastics are usually degraded during processing, so their use is limited. Chemical recycling is an emerging technology that can turn plastics into small molecules or monomers. Although high-quality plastics can be manufactured, such plastics may be energy-intensive products. Using the CreaSolv recycling method, the quality of recycled plastics is very high, and the process is more efficient.
Now, the team has been conducting small-scale experiments using multilayer packaging and composite materials to test the process. At the same time, they are designing a large-scale pilot plant in Bavaria, which will begin trials in July. Dr. Bugnicourt said the main challenge is to deal with plastic waste made from complex plastic mixtures on a large scale.
Members of the team are also developing a system to monitor the composition of plastic waste. They hope to automatically identify the type of plastic and fiber in the product in order to optimize the recycling process according to the batch of recycled materials. Dr. Bugnicourt believes that the system can be installed in existing recycling plants to expand the types of recycled plastics, and special facilities can be built to handle industrial waste.
Improving the existing recycling process can also reduce the environmental impact of plastic waste that is difficult to reuse. Although some commonly used plastics, such as PET plastics used to make beverage bottles, are widely recycled, plastics with more special uses are often not widely recycled, and technical obstacles are one of the reasons.
Dr. Garcia Armingol, director of the Energy and Environment Group at the CIRCE Energy Research Center in Spain, and colleagues are demonstrating ways to increase the recovery rate of difficult-to-recycle plastics as part of the POLYNSPIRE project. They are mainly concerned with polyamide plastics used in parts such as automobile gears and airbags, and polyurethane flexible foams used in products such as mattresses and carpets.
The research team believes that traditional recycling methods can be improved to improve the quality of recycled plastics. To this end, they are working on two technologies: adding glass materials (a newer plastic that is both tough and tough) and adding high-energy radiation. Dr. Garcia Armingol said: "The main goal of both technologies is to improve the wear resistance of recycled materials and improve their performance so that they can be used in demanding applications."
Other innovative technologies they are exploring can improve the chemical recycling method. This technology has great potential in achieving a circular economy because it allows plastics to be continuously recycled while maintaining high quality. However, the environmental footprint of the technology can also be reduced. For example, the use of microwaves or smart magnetic materials can reduce the energy required to generate heat to achieve polymerisation. When a polymerization reaction occurs, the monomers produced by this recycling process will join together to form long-chain molecules that make up the plastic.
So far, the team has been testing such technologies in the laboratory. Now they are preparing for the manufacturing phase of the project, at which time they will prove the feasibility of such technology on a semi-industrial scale. At present, they are working on the pretreatment and purification stages of recycling.
The next step of the project is to prove that the plastics produced by such technologies are of good quality and can replace the original materials. Dr. Garcia Armingol and colleagues will focus on certain applications, such as automotive parts and mattresses with strict quality requirements. Close cooperation with industrial partners in the automotive industry, chemical and waste management companies is also the key to the adoption of such technologies. (Yu Qiuyun)
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