Speaker
Description
In recent years, the use of plastics has increased significantly due to its various properties and applications. The most important plastics worldwide include polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS). These polymers are used in various fields, such as the automotive industry, the medical sector or building and construction, and play an important role in our lives today. However, one of the biggest applications for these different plastics is the packaging sector, where most products have a very short "lifetime" or are also called single-use components.[1] This is one of the reasons why the recycling of products with a very short lifetime has become an issue and has even led to bans on single-use plastic bags, straws, plastic cutlery and other plastic products. Especially packaging made of multi-layer films or containing several plastics is very difficult to recycle and no industrial solutions have been developed to date to counteract this fact.[2]
In this work, possible upcycle approaches will be shown by means of reactive extrusion using peroxides. Also, the potential of blending with different concentrations and different compositions (single blends to quaternary blends) consisting of polyolefins, polystyrene and polyester -processed at different extrusion temperatures- will be discussed. Furthermore, it will be shown what possibilities can arise if a combination of different polymers or blends is replaced by a single polymer. For the characterisation of the upcycled materials, the mechanical properties, such as tensile test and impact strength, and the rheological properties, such as melt behaviour and melt stiffness, were investigated.
Literature
[1] Yin, S., et al., Mechanical reprocessing of polyolefin waste: A review. 2015. 55(12): p. 2899-2909.
[2] Kaiser, K., M. Schmid, and M.J.R. Schlummer, Recycling of polymer-based multilayer packaging: A review. 2018. 3(1): p. 1.
| Speaker Country | Austria |
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