Open- und closed-loop Strategien für das mechanische Recycling der österreichischen PET-Restfraktion

Description

In Austria's sorting plants for lightweight packaging, post-consumer waste is sorted into different material groups. In current plant concepts, PET beverage bottles in par-ticular play a central role due to their recyclability through to food contact applica-tions. However, according to a recent study, only 12.2 % of sorted PET is made up of beverage bottles. The remaining share can be allocated to the main compo-nents (a) other bottles from the food sector, (b) non-food bottles, (c) monolayer trays and (d) multilayer trays [1]. Mechanical recycling has so far only been established for the recycling of PET beverage bottles, whereas other PET packaging is largely sent for incineration. In addition, the PET bottle recyclate available on the market is not on-ly used in closed-loop applications, but also for a variety of packaging and non-packaging applications. This inevitably leads to a discrepancy between recycling tar-gets and actual recycling rates in the PET sector. Particularly with regard to the re-cently proposed mandatory recyclate content in the packaging sector, a simple mass balance shows that mechanical PET recycling in its current form is not sufficient. Therefore, a case study from circPLAST-mr, the Austrian flagship project for the me-chanical recycling of plastics, will be presented. The processing of PET 499 bales from four Austrian lightweight packaging sorting plants was accompanied in an indus-trial-scale test. In particular, the plant-specific composition of the bales was analyzed, enabling correlations to be made with the final recyclate qualities. Selected fractions are then processed into products with different specifications. The aim is to demon-strate closed- and open-loop strategies for product segments from the residual PET fraction, which can make a significant contribution to achieving the recycling targets.

Period	15 Nov 2024
Event title	Recy & DepoTech 2024
Event type	Conference
Location	AustriaShow on map