CLIPP European Project: Study of recyclability of printed or laminated plastic packaging films using supercritical CO2 technologies

The CLIPP European project “Study of recyclability of printed or laminated plastic packaging films using supercritical CO2 technologies”, coordinated by AIMPLAS, officially started on the 1st of January, 2011. The project’s aim is to promote a system which allows to use post-industrial wastes coming from scraps, and reels refused by manufacturers of plastic film for flexible packaging and injected packages.

This EU-funded project is framed within the sub-programme “Capacities”, specifically in the “Research for the Benefit of SMEs” area, within the Seventh Framework Programme. Its consortium is constituted by 10 partners from 4 countries: 3 technological centres, 5 SMEs and 2 large companies. The companies involved in the project cover the whole value chain of the product, including thermoplastic materials processors, manufacturers of equipment for plastic extrusion, film lamination and printing companies, packages manufacturers, recycling companies, and packaging companies from the food sector, which are the final users of the product.

This initiative expects to offer a feasible solution for the management of complex films and injected packages (printed or with embedded labels) wastes generated by companies of flexible packaging and injected packages,, of which recycling offers certain problems due to the presence of particles of pigments, adhesives, and other contaminants. To date, plastic materials recycled from this kind of waste was assigned to low-value applications, such as rubbish bags, pipes, and urban furnishing components.

The recycling system proposed in the CLIPP project expects to remove and compatibilize such contaminants in order to obtain a recycled material that keeps the required properties needed to be transformed again into films or packages for the original application. Thus, this is a closed-loop management system that would allow the companies which generate these wastes to reuse the recycled composites for the same applications.

Packaging and packing sector is one of the main plastic materials consumers, meaning the 35 % of the total. It is estimated a total of 500.000 tonnes of post-industrial waste generated in Europe by companies of film for flexible packaging. This gives an idea of the costs reduction and the environmental benefits that would be obtained by means of this project, contributing actively to achieve the goals expected in the European Directive 2004/12/EC on packages, and packages waste.

In order to develop the recycling technology, the projects considers the use of a series of extruders in tandem with a system of CO2 injection combined with advanced systems of micro-particles filtering. The previous experience acquired by AIMPLAS in this kind of extrusion technologies has allowed to check out the viscosity reduction generated by the CO2 in the molten polymer, favouring the removal of impurities and low molecular weight composites.

On the 20th of January, it took place in the AIMPLAS’ facilities the project kick-off meeting to which representatives from all the centres and companies involved attended. In such meeting, the actions for the first six months were planned. Among them, it is important to mention the definition of the study cases proposed and the configuration of the extrusion systems.

“The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme managed by REA-Research Executive Agency http://ec.europa.eu/research/rea (FP7/2007-2013]) under Grant Agreement n° 261977 CLIPP”.