Recovery of Plastics and Natural Fibers From Non-Recyclable Municipal Solid Waste for Composites Production

This project aims to recover secondary feedstocks of plastics and fibers from mixed flexible plastics (MFP) stream of nonrecyclable waste and develop advanced compounding and manufacturing processes to convert these recyclates to fiber-reinforced polymer composites.

Upon completion, this project will develop an integrated fractionation method that combines novel wet separation and fractionation approaches with air classification and NIR-based separation to decontaminate and obtain four plastic fractions and one natural fiber fraction from waste streams, processable material formulations out of these recyclates, and an advanced compounding procedure based on Ring Extrusion technology that produces high quality feedstocks. This project will reduce primary feedstock by 1.12 million metric tons (MMT) of flexible plastics, 96.7 PJ energy reduction, 1.52MMCO2e. Assumptions based on utilization of 20% of 5.62MMT of flex plastics available for recovery.