Special Packaging Materials from Recycled PET and Metallic Nano-Powders

Abstract

The European methodology for plastics, as a feature of the EU’s circular economy activity plan, ought to support the decrease in plastic waste. The improvement of recycled plastics’ economics and quality is one important part of this action plan. Additionally, achieving the requirement that all plastic packaging sold in the EU by 2030 be recyclable or reusable is an important objective. This means that food packaging materials should be recycled in a closed loop at the end. One of the most significant engineering polymers is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is widely used. Due to its numerous crucial qualities, it has a wide variety of applications, from packaging to fibers. The thermoplastic polyolefin, primarily polyethylene and polypropylene (PP), is a popular choice utilized globally in a wide range of applications. In the first phase of the current experiment, the materials were obtained by hot pressing with the press machine. The reinforcer is made of Al nanopowder 800 nm and Fe nanopowder 790 nm and the quality of the recycled polymer was examined using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), a scanning electron microscope (SEM), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). From DSC variation curves as a function of temperature, the values from the transformation processes (glass transition, crystallization, and melting) are obtained. SEM measurements revealed that the polymer composites with Al have smooth spherical particles while the ones with Fe have bigger rough spherical particles.

Recycled PET Composites Reinforced with Stainless Steel Lattice Structures Made by AM

“…These pores act as local tensors that initiate failure that propagates progressively on the deformation lines. This fact was also observed in the literature for recycled PET reinforced with metallic fillers [27,28].…”

“…These pores act as local tensors that initiate failure that propagates progressively on the deformation lines. This fact was also observed in the literature for recycled PET reinforced with metallic fillers [27,28]. The situation is more complex for S4 samples, where the polymeric filler tends to behave like an S2 sample, but the SLM structure disturbs the deformation mechanism.…”

Thermoplastic Electromagnetic Shielding Materials from the Integral Recycling of Waste from Electronic Equipment

“…In all, studies related to the use of recycled PE as a matrix for antistatic and EMI shielding composites are extremely limited, and studies on recycled PP as a matrix are missing due to the structure and quality of polymeric waste streams that need to be improved using a variety of techniques, including restabilization, rebuilding, compatibilization, and the inclusion of elastomers and specialized fillers [20][21][22][23][24][25]. Because thermo-mechanical degradation via multiple processing affects polyolefins (HDPE and PP) more than thermo-oxidative aging does, special attention should be paid to controlling the processing conditions during mechanical recycling [26][27][28][29][30][31]. On the other hand, if recycled polyolefins from packaging are used as the matrices for composites for electromagnetic shielding applications, expensive conductive or ferritic powders are added to achieve the imposed dielectric properties; a clear drawback, because the economy of using recycled matters becomes insignificant in the cost of the final product [2,[32][33][34][35][36][37].…”