Development and testing of advanced sorting strategies (e.g. product-type based clustering and in-line state-of-the art sensor based sorting) to increase volume of recycled plastics and the yield or purity, impacting the quality of PCRs.
Testing of high-throughput, offline characterization protocol combining rheology, DSC, FTIR, XRF, and ash-testing to efficiently distinguish promising from non-promising plastic waste fractions.
Creation of Material Flow Analysis tool to simulate the behaviour of plastic waste streams under different sorting processes.
Deployment of GreenToken system for modeling PCR material flows and digital chain of custody simulation generating audit-ready documentation aligned with certification schemes.
Selection of feedstocks for BCs and production of small scale high quality recyclates via dissolution based recycling as well as preparation of compounding activities for mechanical recycled materials. Development of a cascading pathways for LHA feedstock combining all 3 recycling technoligies.
Overview and suggestion for EU- standardization and certification activities.
Development of a Recyclability Assessment Tool allowing analysis and improvent throughout the design phase.
Set up of LifeCycleAssessment Scenarios and evalutation of different recycling routes.
Positive results from rPP streams after decontamination and compounding; chemically recycled rPP for BC2 was prototyped and tested. rPP was successfully molded into ESD pallets with satisfactory results at the demonstrator level (BC3). Promising recycled PC-GF10 and PC/ABS have been identified for EEE components (BC4).
No leachable substances were released in cytotoxic concentrations for any of the samples studied, they also showed low concentrations of BPA.
The results of the co-creative design reserach on improving consumer acceptance of recycled plastics in EEE and divestment of WEEE will be used to develop guidelines and frameworks.
The regulatory analysis introduces advanced theoretical concepts for policy mix analysis beyond EEE. It provides an overview of the distribution of requirements and incentives across various value chain steps, covering key policy domains, including chemical and safety legislation, product legislation, and waste legislation. Backed by ecological and economic assessments it enables comparisons of environmental and economic performance of plastic recycling routes, addressing significant (data) gaps in existing techno-economic assessments (TEAs).
The quality of recycling framework is illustrated for rPP, matching quality of input (waste) and output (BC) based on different recycling configurations. The CE-framework is beeing operationalized to predict availabilty of secondary materials across sectors and Europe.
