INNOVATION | SORTING
Peter Atterby of Luxus explains how a pioneering project to develop colourants detectable by near-infrared sorting will enable producers to take responsibility for an important recycling problem
NIR Sort project targets black and coloured plastics
Main image: The project is focusing on black and coloured parts in durable products
Each year 25m tonnes of plastic waste is created across Europe, primarily from three sources – con- sumer packaging, WEEE disposal and vehicle dismantling. The problem of how to ensure the recyclability of these plastics for producers is the focus of a new project, NIR Sort. In 2017 Luxus secured a £1.29m (€1.47m) investment, co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme for NIR Sort. The project aims to replace carbon black and other pigments that are commonly used in polymers, with a new range of near-infrared (NIR) detectable alternatives for adoption by manufactur- ers of multi-use packaging, consumer durables and vehicles.
Novel colourants Each year in the UK alone, a total of 3.5m tonnes of polymer is scrapped as black and many coloured plastic packaging items cannot be detected by sorters used by commercial recyclers. These
32 PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | March/April 2018
products feature a carbon black pigment that reflects very little or no radiation, rendering this plas- tics waste ‘invisible’ to NIR optical sorting machinery. The adoption of these novel colourants will enable current NIR sorting operations to differenti- ate and therefore, segregate black and coloured plastics from mixed waste streams, to a purity that they are usable in highly engineered recycled content polymers – effectively ‘closing the loop’ for responsible producers. Luxus is leading the project with support from
partners: Nordic polymer processor Polykemi and global rigid plastics manufacturer, IPL Plastics (formerly One51). Polykemi and its subsidiary Rondo, which procures recycled materials, will participate in the formulation, process- ing and materials testing that is required. For its part, IPL Plastics brings innovative manufacturing and injection moulding expertise for the automotive parts and WEEE requirements.
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