Mager Moritz, Berghofer Michael, Fischer Joerg
Institute of Polymeric Materials and Testing, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria.
Polymers (Basel). 2023 Jun 22;15(13):2776. doi: 10.3390/polym15132776.
In order to shift to a circular plastics economy, high quality recyclates are required to effectively substitute virgin materials. Current approaches to empirically quantify the substitutability for recyclates are mainly limited by the abundance of virgin material grades along with a lack of adequate application-specific property profiles. In contrast, this work aims for a holistic analysis of the substitution potential of polyolefin recyclates intended for rigid packaging applications. This approach is fundamentally based on the classification of virgin polyolefins into different application-specific sub-groups with defined property windows derived from supplier data sheets, which allows for a generalization within one polymer type without neglecting the various available material grades. Moreover, the findings should provide valuable information for improvements of quality-defining process steps along the value chain of mechanical recycling. Therefore, it is of great importance to correlate the input stream composition of the investigated recyclates with the obtained qualities. The investigation of the substitution potential for selected recyclates clearly highlights the necessity of functional recycling for enhanced quality levels, which especially affects the sorting step in the recycling value chain. This work illustrates that a homogeneous waste stream directly correlates with a high substitution potential. Thus, the development of economically viable sorting strategies which take the functionality of plastic waste products into account must be targeted in future research. Furthermore, the development of detailed application-specific property windows in a joint effort with manufacturers should be pursued, as it allows for a meaningful empirical quantification of the substitutability for recyclates obtained from mechanical recycling.
为了转向循环塑料经济，需要高质量的回收材料来有效替代原生材料。目前通过实证量化回收材料可替代性的方法主要受到原生材料等级繁多以及缺乏足够的特定应用性能概况的限制。相比之下，这项工作旨在对用于刚性包装应用的聚烯烃回收材料的替代潜力进行全面分析。这种方法基本上基于将原生聚烯烃分类为不同的特定应用子组，这些子组具有从供应商数据表中得出的定义好的性能范围，这使得在不忽略各种可用材料等级的情况下能够在一种聚合物类型内进行概括。此外，研究结果应为改进机械回收价值链中质量定义流程步骤提供有价值的信息。因此，将所研究回收材料的输入流组成与获得的质量相关联非常重要。对选定回收材料替代潜力的研究清楚地凸显了功能性回收对于提高质量水平的必要性，这尤其影响回收价值链中的分拣步骤。这项工作表明，均质废物流与高替代潜力直接相关。因此，未来的研究必须针对开发考虑塑料废品功能的经济可行的分拣策略。此外，应与制造商共同努力制定详细的特定应用性能范围，因为这有助于对机械回收获得的回收材料的可替代性进行有意义的实证量化。
