Development of composites with waste plastics and waste glass fibres

Finding value-added uses for post-consumer waste plastic is a very important task. 95% of plastic packaging material value worldwide is lost via single use. Of the 6.8 million tonnes of plastic packaging waste generated in the EU annually, 6.75% is reused or recycled. Several barriers exist, limiting recycling capacity of plastic packaging waste within the UK e.g. 30% of plastic packaging waste is mixed plastic packaging requiring pre-treatment before recycling. Current processes for sorting and cleaning waste plastic are labour-intensive and expensive, failing to capture the economic benefit of this resource.

The project will investigate a novel manufacturing process, utilising mixed plastic packaging waste as a raw material to manufacture upcycled composite products. The project will study the inherent issues in the plastics recycling industry, where 95% of plastic packaging material value is lost to the economy after a very short first-use cycle. This waste can be a valuable potential resource of reusable or recyclable materials, estimated to be worth around £18bn to the UK economy and using this material will divert large volumes of recyclable plastics from landfill and incineration.

Industry sponsor Johns Manville https://www.jm.com/ sends thousands of tonnes of waste glass fibre to landfill annually. The possibilities of developing new circular economy processes to produce value-added products from waste glass-fibre and mixed plastic packaging waste will be investigated.

The overarching objectives of the project are:
- Understand the technical variabilities and challenges associated with mixed plastic wastes and waste glass fibres
- Enhance the chemical compatibility between different types of plastic wastes
- Investigate and enhance interfacial bonding with the waste glass fibres
- Study their processing characteristics
- Investigate mechanical and microstructural properties

The issues arising from the variability of plastic waste characteristics, which may affect material properties and production process performance will be investigated. The proposal will measure and generate a technical database of the recycled plastic properties and investigate pathways to control material properties. Physical characterisation of the waste plastic materials will be carried out to establish the degree of flow and mixing, melting and glass transition temperatures, infiltration of dry glass fabrics, void content and Izod impact properties.

A new patented Enclosed Pressure Moulding (EPM) technology (PALTECH https://paltech.ie/) will possibly be used in this project, in combination with waste glass fibre supplied by Johns Manville. Optimisation of the processing parameters will be carried out to achieve the best properties of recycled mixed plastics and waste glass fibres.

Characterisation and optimisation of polymer alloy and fibre-matrix interfaces will be performed. Fire testing will be performed to investigate its suitability in various industries. Optical microscopy, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), SEM-EDX (Energy Dispersive x-ray), Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Raman and FTIR spectroscopy, will be used. Izod impact strength will be measured. These will be carried out in consultation with Johns Manville and their test facility will be used for advanced characterisation.