BE95-1337 Sustainable Closed Loop System for Recycling of Carpet Materials
The European carpet industry and the strategic suppliers of raw materials for the manufacturing of carpets have a strong need for a cost-effective and ecological justified waste management system for post-use carpet waste. This in order to reduce the high-rising costs of disposal by landfill and Municipal Solid Waste incineration. Especially the rising costs of MSW-incineration is critical because landfill will be strongly restricted in the EU in the near future, while other systems that could manage the disposal of around 1.6 million tons per year of carpet waste are not yet developed.
The chemical companies DSM and EniChem, the European Carpet Association represented by GuT and the German institute for carpet research TFI will take the initiative to develop a sustainable closed loop system for recycling and re-use of materials and energy recovery from post-consumer as well as from post-industrial carpet waste.
Major targets of the proposed developments are to achieve substantial cost reductions (approx. 200 - 400 MECU = 30%) and increased environmental benefits (approx. 125 - 300 MECU = 60%) with the RECAM-system, compared with the results of waste management by MSW-incineration. Other important targets are to recover and recycle in an economic way valuable materials from carpet waste, like caprolactam, PA 6, PA 6.6, PA 6 + 6.6, PP and woolfibres, from which the partners and associated partners can take advantages for their core-business.
The proposed RECAM-system to be developed, includes all necessary steps of collection and logistics as well as of technologies for the identification, sorting, cleaning, size reduction, separation and purification of the material components, recycling of valuable materials and energy recovery from the residual waste streams. Associated partners, each of them highly specialised to the work in the development programmes, are incorporated in the project to secure optimal development results for all individual steps of the RECAM-system. The total system development will be highly innovative. An efficient structure of the project organization will be established to provide good manageability of the work in the several project tasks.
At the end of the project, implementation of the RECAM-system at a large scale demonstration-unit will be pursued by an extended consortium of industrial partners, to introduce the system for use at industrial scale through the countries of the EU.