Spanish plastics technology centre Aimplas (Valencia; www.aimplas.net) is leading a project to develop new recycling processes. The goal is to obtain polyamides from multilayer packaging waste and improve the quality of the recovered PA so that they can be used to make new high-quality products.

The project, called “Recipam” and funded by the Valencian Innovation Agency (AVI, Alicante / Spain; www.innoavi.es), will help recover waste more efficiently, either by improving the separation of multilayer plastics or their recovery through mechanical recycling and pyrolysis. A delamination process will be included to separate the PA as well as a compatibilisation process to reprocess them with other plastic materials in order to obtain compounds of sufficient quality. Recipam’s overall goal is to create a recycling chain for multilayer packaging by collaborating with the entire value chain.

Project participants include waste management company Acteco (Naquera, Valencia; www.acteco.es), chemicals group Ube (Castellón / Spain; www.ube.es), plastics injection moulder Faperin (Alicante; www.faperin.com) and engineering plastics group Repol (Almassora; www.repol.com). The Valencian Association of Plastics Entrepreneuers (www.avep.es) is also involved.

Multilayer plastic structures provide many packaging benefits including weight reduction and good barrier properties, but their waste is not managed in the best possible way. Separating the different layers also calls for new technologies and recycling processes. Another difficulty is the current low demand for recycled plastics, which account for only 6% of total plastics demand in Europe.