A new manufacturing method, monitoring platform and material equipment to carry out a more efficient production of plastic bottles, reducing its waste.

Project Information

PET-Yield

Grant agreement ID: 775888

DOI

10.3030/775888

Project closed

EC signature date 17 May 2017

Start date 1 June 2017

End date 30 September 2017

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

ACCUCOLOUR LIMITED
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PET-Yield (A new manufacturing method, monitoring platform and material equipment to carry out a moreefficient production of plastic bottles, reducing its waste.)

Reporting period: 2017-06-01 to 2017-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Without PETYield, recycled PET can only be used once, for a total of two use cycles from virgin raw material to landfill. This is compounded by a ~7% or higher rate of process losses and scrap losses when processing PET, and increasing dramatically when recycled material is introduced to the process. Overall this limits the reusability of one of the most in-demand materials in the European Union, and hampers the introduction of circular economies for raw materials. Further there is no means of responding to how the material behaves in-process. The blend is prepared before being melted and processed in machines, and if there is a problem, it is simply unavoidable. Combined with the scrap problem and lack of closed-loop recyclability, the cost of PET, both economically and environmentally, is extremely high, at an estimated €325 wasted every hour in manufacturing and 72% of Europe's 780,000,000 tonne plastic consumption going to landfill or being released to soil and water.

Our objective with PETYield is to improve the processability and material properties of PET and recycled PET, with an adaptive system that modifies the properties of the melted material. This is done mid-process, using closed-loop monitoring of key process data such as viscosity and material temperature. From there our proprietary control systems add our proprietary process enhancers to ensure stable behaviour of the material. We aim to reduce scrap from 7% to 2%, effectively saving 70% of the cost to process one tonne of PET. Further, this process can modify recycled material properties, enabling its repeated reuse. This introduces true circular economies to PET supply and production, and reduces waste going to landfill or leaching to the earth.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

To summarise, the Phase 1 Feasibility Project supported out “getting out of the building”. We assembled a team of experts to assess the market and leveraged our own experience and expertise in our target industry. The project has also supported our assessment of our product’s current market-readiness and our needs going forward. It led to the decision to engage a dedicated IP expert and offer her a position at ACCUCOLOUR, likewise with a marketing expert who can support our dissemination and commercialisation plan. These experts will join our new head of IT during commercialisation and piloting of the product and system. Our ongoing trials, supported by private funding, were assessed in the study, which allowed us to devise a focused product development plan. As such we have engaged another expert team member to draft a project plan to demonstrate our system at an industrially-relevant scale, and define the requirements and objectives of such a project. With this in mind we have refined our approach to the work, quantifying the hypothetical innovation/commercialisation project objectives according to SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-specific) criteria, and devised a process for monitoring and controlling the project according to the Six Sigma DMAIC process (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control). Through increased contact with our pilot sites and potential future customers, we verified the feasibility of our system as a product, confirming that live trial data was needed before we could begin selling. This established out “industrial statistically relevant batch size”

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We will bring to market the first and only in-process liquid property-enhancing additive system which reacts to material in the midst of production. We can save 70% of the cost to manufacture PET materials and products, and eliminate the need for land fill of PET material. The end result of our feasibility study is verification that our system is both technically and economically feasible, as demonstrated by the interest of many key stakeholders.

Our Value Stream from our suppliers to public consumers of plastic products & packaging