| Project Detail |
Enhancing plastic recycling methods
The EU’s Green Deal has set a goal for 55 % of plastic packaging waste to be recycled by 2030. Currently, only about one-third is recycled. One of the challenges of plastic recycling is that it usually results in low-quality secondary products due to crystallisation that occurs during cooling. Furthermore, most plastic waste contains additives, making it difficult to determine the correct temperature gradient to avoid crystallisation. Funded by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, the CPW project aims to investigate the crystallisation process using infrared thermal imaging to capture the temperature profile of plastic waste during 3D printing. Using mathematical software, CPW will analyse this profile to pinpoint the precise temperature of crystallite formation that can then be regulated during 3D printing.
Nowadays, the issue of plastic recycling has become one of the major issues of environmental protection and waste management. Since 1950, humans have produced more than 8 billion tons of plastic, of which more than half was discarded into landfills and only 9% was recycled. The majority of plastic waste stemmed from semi-crystalline polymers such PE, PP and PET. When recycled, the properties of these polymers deteriorated due to shrinkage and warpage issues related to the crystallisation process that occurred during the cooling process. The temperature gradient during cooling is able to control the crystallisation growth. However, determining the crystallization process of plastic waste during processing is difficult as generally plastic waste contains additives. Therefore, CPW uses IR thermal imaging technique as it can capture the temperature profile of plastic waste during 3D printing to study the temperature-crystallisation relationship. The existing techniques, such as hot-stage microscopy, X-ray synchrotron and in-situ light scattering, have several restrictions. Among them are non-simultaneous processes, expensive, and requiring high energy radiation sources. Furthermore, these techniques can only be applied to virgin plastic and are limited to transparent polymers that are free from additives and contamination. The captured temperature profile will be analysed using MATLAB to examine the crystallite structure at precise temperature, thus could control their properties through the processing temperature of the 3D printer. An innovative approach through experimental setup and technique used to investigate the crystallisation process will be the novelty of CPW. This research will contribute to at least four research papers with two ISI journals and two conference papers, and a patent application. The implementation of the MSCA will benefit and impact the recycling of plastic wastes in the world, and this is in line with EU’s strategy for the SDG 12 and SDG13. |
