Circular Solutions

Mechanical recycling

The mechanical recycling of collected marine macro-plastic will be demonstrated in furniture manufacturing and as feed for additive manufacturing, i.e. 3D-printing. The plan is to 3D-print various small objects for everyday use in periodical printing demonstrations in municipalities throughout the island of Krk (Croatia), as well as the production of plastic bins, which will be handed out to local schools and kindergartens.

The second approach is a mechanochemistry solution, which is a patented new technology from NanoBay. It uses collected plastic litter together with sand and broken mussel shells to make a new type of building material. This solution is ideal for remote areas with access to beach sand and mussel shells. Instead of having plastic waste that requires disposal (fee), it can be turned into a useful building material, such as bricks.

Chemical recycling

Chemical recycling of marine plastic litter will be based on gasification and pyrolysis processes and demonstrated in lab-scale at the University Politehnica of Bucharest (virtual tour of the labs at UPB is available here). The syngas produced by the gasification process will be analysed in dependence of the feedstock composition and different process conditions. The raw or filtered syngas can be captured and utilized for various applications. The product of the pyrolysis process will be pyrolysis oils which can be incorporated in traditional feedstocks for polymer or other chemical productions.

If suitable, huge quantities (min. 10.000 tons) of nano- and microplastics will be used as feedstock for a steel mill Blast Furnace at ArcelorMittal (AM) in Bremen. The plastic will be co-injection with powdered coal, hence replacing some of the fossil fuels required. The produced syngas can be used either to produce ethanol through a fermentation process or as feedstock for the chemical industry. A second recycling path is mixing the plastic with coking coal in a coke plant at AM Gent to replace fossil fuels.

A closer look into recycling facilities at the AM Gent plant can be seen in this 360° virtual tour

Circular strategies

Within In-No-Plastic we will identify and test an approach where marine litter will be sorted and reused in line with the circular economy and the plastics strategy. As both macro and micro-plastics will be collected, we intend to investigate different solutions for the further use of the collected plastics, which will depend on its quality (size, polymer type, contamination level etc.) as well as the regional capabilities and infrastructure for recycling and reuse (municipal level sorting and recycling, local private recycling initiatives).

As there is a large uncertainty regarding the amount of plastics to be collected or treated, In-No-Plastic has adopted multiple approaches considering both large scale (via Steel Blast Furnace) or local small scale (3D-printing, furniture etc.) approaches. This will ultimately provide a road map on circularity and provide a software app that will make transparent on how the “captured” plastic is processed in the value chain (traceability).