Plastics bring unprecedented value in terms of convenience, versatility of design and lightweight even in high end applications. They share insufficient recycling rate, while the limit of our natural resources has been identified as one of our key societal challenges. Only 31% of plastic packaging are currently recycled and an excessive 30-40% are landfilled, due to infra-developed technologies or to their unsatisfactory economic viability. This is aggravated by considering plastics as commodities where their economic value is linked to a single use. The time has come to shift to a Circular Model improving the recycling rate, but also the value of secondary raw materials from plastic recycling. As such, MultiCycle developed an advanced & sustainable recycling processes and value chains to recover plastic-based multi-materials and processing them to be used for the manufacturing of new products in two sectors: flexible multilayer film from the packaging sector, and fiber reinforced composites from the automotive sector. MultiCycle demonstrated the feasibility to recover different types of polymers PE, PP, PA or PET and also fibers such as glass fiber and carbon fibers and reprocessing them for the production of different products instead of using virgin materials.
As a result, MultiCycle overcome the current technical and non technical challenges and go a step further by developing and demonstrating:
-A upscaled and digitized recycling pilot plant to recover waste materials based on CreaSolv® process
-Integrated advanced monitoring and PAT solutions for material identification and process improvement
-Optimized recycling and re-processing steps in an industrial environment for the polymers and fibers recovered
-Upgraded new formulations, and reprocessing techniques for recycled materials and new products,
-The potential of the recovered materials for packaging and automotive applications to close the cycle. In the automotive sector, three demos were produced using recyclates: door panel pockets, fibers nowoven and battery carrier. In the packaging sector, bags, pouches or sachets as demonstrators were produced using the recyclates.
Therefore, MultiCycle demonstrated the viability of the circular value chain approach. In this sense, the project is boosting feasible recycling process technologies and fostering the incorporation of secondary raw materials to allow closing the material cycle for both sectors assessed.
