Page 36 - ILK Research Report 2020
P. 36

GePart

               Development of efficient process technologies
               within the closed particle foam material cycle



                                    The objective of the project is to improve the re-  Period
                                    source efficiency of particle foam expanded polypro-  01.12.2020 – 30.11.2023
                                    pylene (EPP). The main topic of the project is on the
                                    one hand to make the material cycle of the particle   Project Director
                                    foams industrially possible by estabishing recycling   Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Maik Gude
               processes, recycling technologies and strategies and on the other hand to
               significantly increase the energy efficiency of EPP processing by applying the   Contact Person
               novel radio frequency (RF) process technology. The core of the development   Dr.-Ing. Bernd Grüber
               of RF-technology is therefore the targeted further development of specific
               moulding technology to enable the efficient processing of polypropylene (PP)   Funding
               in series production.                                            •  Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs
                                                                                  and Energy (BMWi)
               In order to be able to close the material cycle, the recycling processes must   •  Project Management Jülich (PtJ)
               be further developed in such a way that recycled particle foam waste material
               (end-of-life) is processed to a high-quality standard in order to feed it back   Project Partner
               into the processing chain of particle foams. Therefore it is necessary to clarify   •  Ruch Novaplast GmbH
               the degradation behaviour of the material in order to be able to define pro-  •  Volkswagen AG
               cesses for treatment in a targeted manner. In addition, the use of RF-technol-  •  Kurtz GmbH
               ogy offers an outstanding potential to significantly increase the proportion of   •  T. Michel Formenbau GmbH & Co. KG
               recycled material to 50 –70 %.                                   •  R. Plast GmbH
                                                                                •  Neue Materialien Bayreuth GmbH
                                                                                •  Kaneka Belgium NV
               These two main topics are accompanied by a comprehensive material analysis   (associated partner)
               for the evaluation of the material properties along the entire cycle as well as
               the preparation of a life cycle assessment also considering several recycling
               cycles of the materials.



































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