ADDITIVES | RECYCLING


Performance Materials is commercialising an ethylene-propylene multi-block compatibiliser additive for recycled HDPE and isotactic PP, and Nexam Chemical’s additive offering uses reactive chemistry to compatibilise recycled streams such as PP and HDPE or PE and PA. UK-based Interface Polymers is focused on solving compatibility issues using its patented di-block copolymer Polarfin additive technology. The company says in one project, a company is aiming to use the Polarfin technology to allow blending of mixed PE/PP recycled plastic into a polar polymer to be used in textiles. In another, it says it has demonstrated that a multilayer plastic film could be recycled back into a multilayer film without loss of properties or an increase in gels.


Reactive option The Ken-React additive from Kenrich Petrochemi- cals acts as both a heteroatom titanate coupling agent to compatibilise fillers with polymers and as an organometallic catalyst to repolymerise and copolymerise addition polymers (such as polyole- fins and PVC) and condensation polymers (such as PET and polyamide) in the melt, says Kenrich


President Salvatore Monte. Monte says that masterbatches of the neoalkoxy


titanate/mixed metal catalyst in pellet form (CAPS KPR) or powder form (CAPOW) can be added during the compounding step to improve proper- ties of any polymer blend—polyolefins, PET, PVC, PLA and others. The catalyst repolymerises in the melt to restore virgin-like properties to the recycled polymers. The additive also compatibilises inor- ganic and organic materials often viewed as “contaminants” in the recycle stream, including calcium carbonate, carbon black, and oils. “The neoalkoxy titanate proton coordinates with


inorganic fillers and organic particulates to couple and compatibilise dissimilar interfaces at the nano-atomic level,” he says. The additive is unlike any other compatibiliser, claims Monte, because it works with all different types of materials—addition polymers, condensation polymers, and fillers—at low addition levels. It is being tested in PIR as well as investigated at the R&D level for PCR. When used optimally in a compounding extruder, it can be used to produce polymers with virgin-like properties from unsorted, mixed recyclate streams, he says. “Plastics recycling has many problems—including


More than value


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