ADDITIVES | MATERIALS


Suppliers jump into new


market for recycling additives Additives are an established way to improve virgin polymers’ properties and now producers are showing how they can also restore or enhance recyclate and expand recycled plastics applications. By David Eldridge


Additives producers have woken up to the growth potential for recycled polymers that is offered by the targets set by legislators and brand owners to greatly increase the recycled content of plastics packaging and other applications. The potential lies in targeting mixed waste streams – to convert, for example, post-industrial barrier film into a viable feedstock – and in the upcycling of post- consumer recyclate through restoring or enhancing properties and performance. The products on offer to plastics recyclers and recompounders improve recyclate in a wide range of functions, including stabilisation, melt flow, impact resistance, VOC reduction and compatibilisation. Exhibitors at AMI’s new focused trade fairs in Cleveland, US, in May discussed additive products that help recyclers produce pellets with improved


www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com


performance. BYK Additives has a wide range of additives for compounding virgin polymers and increasingly for compounding with recyclate. Tom Inch, Market Manager for Thermoplastic Additives at BYK USA, presented some of these during the Plastics Recycling World Expo’s conference sessions. Oxidation causes degradation of polymer at many stages of its life, from polymerisation to processing, and by the time it is used in the form of recyclate its properties are impaired. The answer is “restabilisation”, said Inch, as this “returns the resin back towards its original properties” and “gives maximum flexibility for re-use”. Without the addition of stabiliser, polypropylene


recyclate is restricted to products that are thick- walled and which may have a short-term use. But


July/August 2019 | PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD 15


Main image: Additives can offer a variety of improve- ments to polymer recyclates


PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK


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