Plastics Institute: Ecological recycling of coated components
The Kunststoff-Institut Lüdenscheid will start the joint company project "Sustainable refinement of plastics" in September 2023. The aim of the two-year project is to recycle coated scrap components and returns by means of recycling and various decoating processes and to prepare them for reprocessing.
Many plastics are refined in a wide variety of areas for protection against the effects of weathering, aging, functionalization or to increase their visual value. At the same time, this makes reuse or recycling more difficult. Already in the production process of plastic finishing, high reject rates occur due to dirt inclusions and various other defects. Reworking is not always possible or economical, so material consumption increases and at the same time high-quality material has to be disposed of. In order to meet the demand for a more climate, resource and environmentally friendly processing of plastics, it is necessary to consider the recycling of the scrap but also of discarded refined or coated products.
The joint project Sustainable Refinement of Plastics is dedicated to this topic. The content of the project is investigations into the recycling of coated plastics. The project participants determine which plastic substrates and coating materials will be considered. The following three approaches are analyzed for reprocessing: Recycling of coated components, decoating and direct recoating, and recycling of a decoated system.