Recycling project offers potential to save industry £50m per annum

Whilst many modern moulded components are marked with information as to their polymeric nature, the separation of materials such as painted or plated polymers, represents a real problem in terms of cost effective primary high value recycling.

To solve the problem, a two-year project has been established to develop a cost effective automated technique for the efficient separation of polymer substrate and surface coatings, providing industry with a very real means of saving over £50m per annum in terms of energy and materials usage in the UK alone.

The project itself is supported by the UK DTI and EPSRC under the Waste Minimisation Through Recycling, Reuse and Recovery in Industry Programme. It is being led by Pera Technology and the University of Nottingham.

The project is building upon pioneering work undertaken by Cryogenesis in the field of dry ice blasting, combined with recent re-compounding work undertaken by Curtis and Peguform UK.

Two companies, Anglair and Automation Technologies are bringing process automation skills to assist, and the University of Nottingham, in conjunction with EPSRC, are using high speed imaging techniques to observe the cryogenic stripping process and surface analytical skills to examine cleaned substrates.

During its first year, the project has proven that it is possible to strip certain types of paint and chrome coatings from the polymer substrates using cryogenic blasting.

Having achieved this initial goal, an attempt will be made to widen the type of paint coatings which can be removed and improving the efficiency of the system through a prototype automated process.