polynSPIRE has concluded in Feb 2023, with the following achievements:
• Improvement of chemical reactions of PA and PU depolymerization assisted by MW. An intermediate scale of MW reactor has been configured and installed, and specific simulations of the MW heating process have been completed to assess the power needs of an industrial recycling process. Designs of industrial reactor have been developed. Material and safety requirements and know-how for future industrial scale have been generated.
• Processes for chemical recycling of PU and PA assisted by SMM have been developed. Progresses have been made in understanding the catalytic activity in the relevant depolymerization processes, and were proven on the lab scale with post-industrial waste feedstock. These application tests provided useful guidance on how to further develop this technology. In addition, the final detailed engineering of the pilot plant has been completed.
• Mechanical recycling processes have also been validated in the project. Specifically, advance mechanical recycling processes, and use of vitrimers to recycle PU foams through the application of standard plastic processing technologies. Validation at semi-industrial level of gamma rays as an external energy source for the generation of crosslinking and the implementation of gamma rays treated materials in injection moulding has been achieved as well, and development of an industrial methodology for the application of gamma rays in plastic materials.
• PolynSPIRE has also contributed to validate the use of plastic residues as a carbon substitute in the steel manufacture process. Plastic grains have been studied for this application, where a new injector in an Electric Air Furnace has been designed and commissioned, and real industrial scale tests have proven successful substitution of 30% of coal in every operation.
As transversal activities developed to evaluate the project results, LCA and LCC methodologies were created and applied to evaluate the impact of each technology developed. Also, and exploration of the data collected for the recycling processes was conducted and different machine learning models were trained to estimate the environmental impacts depending on the selected operating conditions.
By last, in order to maximize the project impact, a market analysis has been developed in polynSPIRE for technologies and results, exploitation road for the KERs, and Business Plans. Also, very good results have been obtained in terms of dissemination: since Oct, 2018, polynSPIRE was present in 34 conferences, 14 internal events, 13 scientific and online publications and 25 lectures and seminars. These, together with the 11 project videos produced, and the activity in social media, has reached an impact of approximately 10,200 persons reached from the scientific community, 870 industry representatives and 12,600 from general public.
