DEINKING – a water-based process to eliminate printing from plastics
Country of development/application:
Spain
Scope of innovation
☐ Office work
☒ Production / Service supply process
Sector-specific
☒ Yes / please, specify sector(s): Plastics processing
☐ No (relevant for all sectors)
Description of the needs
Growth of demand in plastics leads to an increase of plastics waste. Due to residual pigments from printings on plastic packaging, plastics have poor aestheticр, physical and mechanical properties and are only recycled to make low quality products, huge amounts of them going to landfill or incineration. By eliminating the pigments, the materials keep their plasticity and original colour, normally transparent or white; then, these plastics can be used as raw material to make the same (or other) products. This way the plastics stop being waste but become a resource.
Description of the solution
CADEL RECYCLING LAB has developed a unique process that removes printed ink from plastics before obtaining a recycled material. The result of the process is an ink-free plastic with a quality very similar to that of new plastic.
Cleaning chemicals with water-based formulations are used in the process. Neither solvents nor environmentally hazardous chemicals are included.
CADEL RECYCLING LAB has valuable know-how not only in the removal of the ink, but also in the development of a water treatment system which makes the process both economical and environmentally viable. Both the deinking solution and the rinsing water are continually reused in the system, with the consequent savings in reagents and waste handling.
The deinking process is applicable to all kinds of plastics and works with any kind of ink:
CADEL RECYCLING LAB has a demonstration plant with a treatment capacity of 100 kg/h. The plant has the equipment needed in an industrial facility, so the company can demonstrate the process and conduct tests with the customers’ material and check the process in each case.
The objective of CADEL RECYCLING LAB is to license the technology to third parties, for them to build and develop plastic recycling plants with deinking.
Description of the effect
The DEINKING solution is simple: it is a water-based process to eliminate printed ink and other contaminants in plastics (like paper stickers, glue, dust), and obtain recycled plastics of high quality, similar to virgin, to make these plastics circular in a way that can have from 5 to 10 more cycles. The particularity of the process is that it is water-based, without any solvents involved, and it incorporates a water-treatment system to reuse the same water for several months, making it a very sustainable technology.
Environmental benefits:
• Operational expenses between 180 and 240 €/t.;
• The solution reduces the CO2 emissions x 5;
• 0% of solvent usage;
• 100% use of a waste that did not have much value;
• A minimum of 5 cycles of life for the same deinked plastics.
Financial benefits:
• +/- 2 years payback;
• Little cost per tonne of deinked recycled plastic to reuse compared with the alternative, which is to pay to be taken for incineration, etc.;
• Cuts costs of solvents (0$).
Company/companies that developed/implemented/offer the innovation
CADEL RECYCLING LAB is fundamentally a Research and Development company, in which most of the workers are highly qualified technicians. As a result, the company has a strong investigative foundation. This vocation drives it to transfer its R+D+i projects to the market.
In its R&D strategy the company includes other research projects related to recycling plastic products. One of the most ambitious projects of CADEL RECYCLING LAB is Delaminating. Some plastic products are materials composed of various kinds of plastic joined by glues and adhesives that are difficult to separate. The results obtained at a laboratory level indicate that it is possible to separate the plastic layers and remove the ink that was between them, and so allowing them to be recycled.
CADEL DEINKING S.L
C/ Artesanos, 4 A – 03690 San Vicent del Raspeig (Alicante) SPAIN
Phone: +34 965 66 13 68
E-mail: info@cadelrecyclinglab.com
Website: https://cadelrecyclinglab.com/
Additional information