EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Mixed engineering plastic wastes (MPs) at the end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) have been overlooked for decades due to their low weight fraction in automobiles and complex characteristics. These resulted in landfilling 500 kilo tonnes of ELVs plastic waste in 2017. Generally, compounding these MPs, which are the residue after the sorting process, performs poor mechanical properties and devalued because of the immiscibility characteristic of polymer blends. In this study, mechanical recycling via a composite approach aims to revalue these MPs into secondary raw materials and structural application reducing the landfill rate and moving towards to a circular economy. After reinforcing these MPs with high stiffness and strength fibre; short carbon fibre (sCF) at 2.5, 5, 10 and 20%wt, both flexural and tensile properties improve linearly to the weight fraction of sCF. Flexural strength and modulus of sCF20%/MPs increased 2-folds and 5-folds, respectively compared to unreinforced MPs. Moreover, MPs reinforced composite outperforms virgin engineering plastic in both flexural modulus and strength. This leads to equivalent performance with 22% weight reduction. Finally, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which demonstrates the environmental effects with consideration of energy, raw materials and fuel consumption from cradle-to-grave was conducted to provide a sustainability overview of this upcycling process.