Recovery of postconsumer mechanically recycled polymers

Mechanical recycling plays a key role in reducing landfill bound plastics that pollute our environment. This process converts plastic waste into marketable pellets by sorting, cleaning, grinding into flakes, compounding in the molten state, and ultimately pelletizing. A primary restriction for the widescale usage of mechanical recycling is the highly variable quality and mechanical properties of the plastic waste feedstock. Degradation can occur during the plastic life cycle with the consumer, during the mechanical processing itself, or during the complex sorting process required to produce the feedstock. This study explores how rheological characterization can mitigate the batch-to-batch variability and identify a potential application for each batch. Shear and extensional rheology of “application-specific” virgin high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and virgin polypropylene (PP) was used as the control for this categorization process. Recycled HDPE and PP from three different streams were then measured and compared to the results from the control study. Rheological measurements proved to be very effective at providing sufficient differentiation to categorize the recycled polymer as suitable for different applications such as injection molding, blow molding, or thermoforming. Finally, the usage of an additional step to sort the recycled polymers by their initial use application was found to achieve a remarkably consistent recovery of application-specific material properties. This secondary sorting could provide significant added value for mechanically recycled polymers.