Use Additives, Overcome Recycling Problems: Experts

By Author: joan evans
Total Articles: 16
Comment this article

Recycling polymers is the buzzword in today's environment conscious plastic industry. Recyclable polymer scrap comes from two sources: domestic or post user and industrial scrap.

Before making pellets from this scrap, the recycler has to wash and shred it to smaller pieces. Then, the pellets are used to make various plastic products.

However, recycling reduces the quality of the polymer. First and foremost, recycled polymers invariably have poorer physical properties compared to the virgin polymers.

Second, the polymers from two different sources do not meld with each other easily even if they are of the same plastic.

Also, the recyclers face problems due to moisture content of the scrap. Moisture creates surface defects, which reduce the aesthetics of the end products, reducing their value.

Due to moisture, the pellets often lack good surface finish and the reduced strength results in poor physical properties of the products made from such pellets.

Generally, the recyclers use desiccants either while recycling scrap or while making products from pellets, in order to reduce the ...
... effect of moisture.

Besides pellets, Blown film extrusion is the most common method to make plastic films, especially for the packaging industry. it involves extruding a tube of molten polymer through an annular die and
inflating it to form a thin film bubble.

The bubble is then collapsed and used in various film applications. Polyethylene (PE) is mostly used for the process. These days, recycled PE is also gaining popularity among blown film manufacturers.

However, properties of the film, such as tensile strength, flexural strength, toughness, and optical properties are again highly dependent on the quality of polymer used for making the film and often have defects due to moisture and reduced polymer quality of plastic scrap

Vin Polymer Additives' RecycloAid is a high performance additive for recycling plastics, specially designed to tackle the twin problem of moisture and poor polymer quality.

“Not only does RecycloAid remove moisture related surface defects, it also homogenizes the polymer mix, enhancing the physical properties of the end product,” said Rohit Mahajan, technical expert at VPA.

The additive has captured a substantial chunk of European recycling markets owing to its twin action and has become the flagship offering of the company.