B1-04 The production process development of the high-quality plastics resin from the recycling plastic-wastes
Principal Investigator
IMAI Asami（Toyama Kankyo Seibi Co., Ltd.）
Research and Development Overview
In this project, we are committed to expand the use of recycled plastic materials in the domestic market. We aim to develop and produce high-quality recycled plastic pellets using waste plastic packaging materials, such as containers and packaging plastics, discarded from households as raw materials.
For PP, we examined the operating conditions of the optical sorting machine and reviewed and evaluated the necessary procedures in the washing process to reduce foreign substances and contaminants adhering to the surface. Furthermore, we plan to investigate the causes of odors and start considering improvement measures.
For PE recycled materials, high-quality PE-based recycled materials with improved purity and reduced foreign matter will be sent to film manufacturers, and the challenges associated with achieving a blend ratio of 20% or more of recycled materials will be identified. Tensile testing will be conducted on the produced films to evaluate their strength.
Progress and Achievements
We examined a sorting process by evaluating the physical properties of existing materials and establishing methods and control procedures for homogenization to improve the purity of recycled materials. In addition, we investigated a continuous production performance and molding behavior of recycled materials.
We analyzed correlation between PP purity and various physical properties. It is shown that impact strength decreases as the PP purity decrease. The decrease in PP purity is due to an increase in contamination (for example, foreign materials such as PS).
Furthermore, through discussions with molding manufacturers and brand owners, and their evaluations, “odor” was identified as one of the key issues which is limiting use of recycled materials. We investigated which of several agent was most effective in reducing odor.