Post-Industrial and post-consumer materials: an experience of virtuous recycling and circular economy.

Abstract of the lecture (if applicable) The polymers’ recovering, considered as industrial scraps, today it is a tough commitment to make sustainable the recycling process. For many years, Radici Group, active in the polyamide business, recovers scraps to obtain compounds for “new life” applications. HERAMID brand defines the PIR polyamides produced starting from processing waste internally generated, to produce new materials at the low environmental impact. These materials, identified as post-industrial, if compared to the corresponding virgin one, highlight a considerable decreasing in the mechanical properties. However, following the proper design approach, these post-industrial materials can be used in critical applications like the automotive one.
The Radici’s know-how concerning this field can be largely used to develop the technologies to perform the post-consumer recycling. This latter, performed in an efficient way starting from components dismantled from end-of-life vehicles, represents the challenge to make possible the circular economy business model. The resultant material will be applied to produce new components to be used still in the automotive sector, or in others. The recycling for the materials re-use, to reduce the incineration and the landfill dispersion represents the strategic objectives for the industries and the institutions. The powerful incentive is given from European Directive 2000/53/CE, where all the economic actors in the automotive market, as materials producers, carmakers, dismantlers, etc. are called to reach the challenging recovering target equal to 95% for each vehicle. Currently, the technical and economic feasibility of the recycling process is under evaluation, taking into account the requirements of the applications where the post-consumer materials are aimed. The final goal will be to promote virtuous recycling achieving the circular economy business by re-using these recovered materials.
The presentation will be organized in two moments. The first one will be presented the most common applications of the brand HERAMID, briefly mentioning the production process of it. By the second, the Car-E Service European Project will be highlighted showing the first promising results obtained from the end-of-life components treatments.
Describe the activity proposal Every year TMP (Tecnici Materie plastiche association) organizes this congress where the important players in the techno-polymers business present their research activities. This is an important occasion to promote and disseminate the Car-E Service project activity, mainly concerning the techno-polymer value chain.
http://www.associazionetmp.com/eventi.php