A new EU-funded project was launched in June 2019 to recycle old PVC flooring by eliminating plasticisers and producing high-quality PVC from the recycled polymers. Dubbed “Circular Flooring”, the project addresses the 500,000 t PVC flooring market and expects the impact on the flooring value chain will be substantial.

Old PVC floor coverings may contain phthalate plasticisers that are no longer in use in new products. These plasticisers cannot be extracted by existing mechanical processes. However, project coordinator Fraunhofer Institute of Process Engineering and Packaging IVV (Freising / Germany; www.ivv.fraunhofer.de) and CreaCycle (Grevenbroich / Germany; www.creacycle.de) have developed the “CreaSolv” process, which separates phthalate plasticisers and eliminates undissolved matter as well as dissolved plasticisers in an extractive purification step. Pure PVC is then recovered and solvents will be reused completely in the process.

CreaSolv has already passed laboratory tests. The project aims to expand on the technical and commercial feasibility of this recycling process for PVC floor coverings at an industrial scale. It will receive about EUR 5.4m from the EU’s research programme “Horizon 2020” until May 2023. 11 companies and research institutes from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Greece are participating.