Introduction

ROPLASTIC recycles waste plastic through a flexible and simple process. It creates a market that up until now has been considered disadvantageous. The aim of the proposed technology is to enable the circular synthesis of polyesters and polyamides (approximately 20% of the polymer market) which have a high commercial value, enhancing waste that had been considered unrecoverable.

Technical features

The process uses a new generation semi-chemical system that can reduce the typical recycling time from days to a mere few hours, thus saving energy, money and space. The process consists of three steps: 1) Polymer recovery: the polymer is recovered by using an inert solvent. This step eliminates volatile contaminants, partially increasing the molecular weight of the polymer and creating cyclic oligomers. 2) Purification: The solvent is separated with heavy contaminants, dyes and additives to obtain a pre-polymer with a high degree of polymerisation and a mainly cyclic oligomer fraction. The solvent is also completely recycled after purification. 3) Re-polymerisation: In combination with a suitable catalyst, the cyclic oligomers are exploited in the re-polymerisation process, which takes only 20-30 minutes of reaction time to complete.

Possible Applications

• Consumer polymers industry;
• Industrial and food packaging,
• Textile industry;
• High-performance composite polymer industry for technical, automotive, construction use;
• Recovery of amino acids and proteins from bio-waste for supplement production.

Advantages

• Recycling plastic compounds that previously could not have been recycled;
• Recovering polyesters, polyamides, cotton textiles and packaging;
• Decontaminating polymers from hazardous contaminants (both light and heavy) regardless of source material and colour;
• Cost-effective;
• Eliminating a dedicated polymerisation process.