PIM moulding of post consumer mixed plastics

Abstract

Post consumer plastics from household are highly mixed and contaminated and are thus particularly difficult to recycle. Although advances in sorting and cleaning technologies for waste plastics have enable the relatively pure and clean streams such as bottles to be recycled, there is a increasing need for processing technologies that can utilise the low grade and mixed plastic residues from the plastics recovery facilities (PRF). In this work, potentials of utilisation of such feedstock in Powder Impression Moulding (PIM), a process capable of fabricating lightweight sandwich structures, are investigated in terms effects of loading and size of flakes from PE-rich mixed plastics in the formulations of the core on flexural properties of the sandwich panels. It was demonstrated that sandwich panels can be made by incorporating about 75 wt% of coarse flakes of a low-grade mixed plastics material directly obtained from a PRF.