Two Utrecht projects received funding within National Growth Fund programme Circular Plastics NL

This research project aims to develop and use new technologies to recover inorganic and organic colorants from polyesters, in particular polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycle streams, and reuse these colorants to synthesize recycled PET materials. The focus will be on widely used colorants in PET bottles, which are commercially interesting. However, the recovery and reuse of such colorants can only be properly achieved when their purity and stability are guaranteed

Consortium: CuRe Technology, Holland Colours, and Universiteit Utrecht.

In order to boost recycling rates, technologies that yield a higher quality product are needed. Chemical transformations to valuable chemicals are promising. For polyolefin plastics, however, breaking the strong chemical bonds requires high temperatures, which leads to uncontrolled chemical transformations and thus a low-value product. With a consortium of extrusion, polymer, process evaluation, pyrolysis and catalysis experts, we aim at lowering the temperature required for the process. We will exploit the forces in an extruder as an additional driver for the chemical conversion, which will help obtain chemicals, such as the ones used to make plastics again, in higher purity.

Consortium: Carboliq, Coperion, Ruhr University, Universiteit Maastricht, and Universiteit Utrecht.