WERG

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WERG
Profit from Plastic
Richard Hooper University of Brighton
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Funded through Entrust Landfill Tax Credit
Scheme
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TWO THEMES
Household Waste Plastics
End-of-Life Vehicle Plastics
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Household Waste Plastics
Packaging and Packaging Regulations 1997
End of June 2001 recover between 5060
packaging waste recycle between 2545 packaging
waste recycle at least 15 of each material
Member States have discretion to implement the
Directive UK response 45 Recovery, 13
recycling in 2000
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Household Waste Plastics
1.7 million tonnes of waste packaging per annum
1.1 million tonnes in household 0.6 million in CI
1998 plastic recycling was 8 17 increase
(recovery and recycling) to meet Directive targets
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Household Waste Plastics
Barriers to Recycled Plastic The Lessons
Collection and Reprocessing
Changing the myth that recycled plastics have to
be used for lowquality products
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Recycled Plastic into Automotive Products
Manual recycling different resins Testing of
sample specimens injection and blow moulding
Automotive products possible high-end
products Recycled HDPE (post-consumer) into fluid
containers
STEPPING STONE TO A HIGHER VALUE PRODUCT
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Reprise Brighton Plastic
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Project Deliverables
Development of a trial product using HDPE
recovered from a MRF
Arranging for the processing of HDPE material,
making of moulds, and interacting with plastic
manufacturer to ensure products are produced to
specifications
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UK Situation ELVs
10-12 million End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs)
annually in the EU
Approximately 1.8 million ELVs in the UK
500,000 tonnes of non-metallic waste landfilled
Reduction by 40 (by mass) by 2006, 80 by 2015
Challenges to both automotive and recycling
industries
Identification and separation of specific
components for recycling
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Simple Approach
Shredded material
Trommel into size fractions
Air classification foam
Density floatation plastics
Magnetic properties metal and wire
Production of materials from 100 shredder
residue plastic
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Shredder Residue Composition
Heterogeneous nature that continually varies
9 plastic by weight in an average car
Plastic 90 gt8mm
Foam 95 gt8mm
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Plastic Recycling
Need to increase recycling rate of ELVs
Predominant plastics are thermoplastic
polyolefins TPOs
Simple density floatation low cost and ease
Quantity and consistency market values
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Hand-picked Plastic Experiment
Plastics picked from shredder residue gt100 mm and
100 10 mm sizes
Infrared spectroscopy to separate TPO plastics
Density-floatation separation
Washing and drying of plastic
Reprocessing and testing
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Have since repeated this on over-sized SR
fraction sink-float experiments show exactly
the same properties
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Polypropylene
Large volumes being sought
Testing regularly
PP for automotive use
PP for kerbside boxes
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The Next Steps
Cut out the middle man product development
Certification for end users continual
development
Mixed waste materials scientific development