Recycling of multilayer packaging as secondary feedstock for production of HDPE blends

• Grant number: 22/00282-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2023
• End date: February 29, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Materials and Metallurgical Engineering - Nonmetallic Materials
• Principal Investigator: Ana Paula Lemes
• Grantee: Nathan Kevin Carvalho
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciência e Tecnologia (ICT). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São José dos Campos. São José dos Campos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The environmental problems related to waste accumulation have encouraged recycling, especially of polymeric materials. As consumption of disposable materials increase significantly in the last decades, recycling become an extremely important tool for development of circular economy. One of the materials produced in large scale is the multilayer packaging, which is hardly recycled by conventional processes because of consisting of distinct materials. Thus, it is indented to use multilayer packaging as secondary feedstock for production of high density polyethylene (HDPE) blends. The packages will be collected, sanitized and characterized by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) in order to identify the polymers which they are made of. The packages with similar composition and high amount of material will be selected and shredded in a knife mill. The packaging fragments will be processed with HDPE in the fractions of 0:100, 25:75, 50:50, 75:25 and 100:0, with polyethylene grafted with maleic anhydride (PE-g-MA) as compatibilizer, in a thermokinetic homogenizer followed by molding in a pneumatic press under pressure and temperature. The materials will be characterized by tensile, IZOD impact strength, Shore D hardness, optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogavimetric analysis (TGA). Therefore, by the morphology and the main mechanical and thermal properties of the blends, it is expected to verify the potential application in furniture and construction industry. The composition which shows the best thermomechanical performance is going to be processed twice according to the same method and characterized again in order to verify the effects of recycling over the studied blend properties. This project also counts on rheological characterization in the Institute for Polymer Research of the University of Waterloo by a partnership established with professor Leonardo Simon, as a result of a BEPE project, which is going to be submitted after the approval of this project.