Main Technical Achievements M24 | NTUA

Recycling within SMARTFAN (NTUA)

From June 2019, recycling activities in SMARTFAN have been initiated. The aim was to propose guidelines regarding the recycling of polymer composites, considering both thermoplastics and thermosets. In order to provide proper guidelines to the project partners, an internal investigation started within the consortium, to identify the scrap materials that are abundant and need specific handling; industrial partners have been contacted for this reason. Specifically, ELC represented the thermoplastic wastes streams that occur during injection moulding and DAL represented the thermoset waste streams from automotive.

Also, special focus has been given to the materials used within SMARTFAN project for Additive Manufacturing, and the varying processes through which the scrap material that is generated can be identified, sorted, recycled, characterised and reused. For the case of thermosets, different strategies have been suggested, to increase the resources efficiency and to identify the re-use possibilities for the epoxy-based scrap in lower value structures or as low value filler, suitable for industrial use. Taking into account the available scraps within SMARTFAN consortium, the following flowchart has been developed, as a guideline for reusing/recycling the composites wastes in WP4.
Recycling within SMARTFAN
(NTUA)