Alcoa Affiliate Introduces First Carton Packaging Recycling Plant

Alcoa  announced that its Brazilian affiliate, Alcoa Aluminio, has joined Tetra Pak, Klabin and TSL Ambiental to inaugurate what it claims is the world's first carton packaging recycling facility located in Piracicaba, Brazil.

The plant will use plasma technology, which enables the total separation of aluminum and plastic components from the cartons. This process constitutes a significant enhancement to the current recycling process for carton packaging, which up until now, separated paper, but kept plastic and aluminum together. The plasma process provides another option for recycling, allowing for the return of all three components of the package to the productive chain as raw material.

Alcoa, which supplies thin-gauge aluminum foil to Tetra Pak for aseptic packaging, uses the recycled aluminum to manufacture new foils.

The new plasma facility has the capacity to process 8,000 tons per year of plastic and aluminum, corresponding to recycling approximately 32,000 tons of aseptic packaging.

The company also notes that the emission of pollutants during the recovery of the materials is minimal, handled in the absence of oxygen, without combustion, yielding an energy efficiency rate close to 90 percent.

The application of plasma technology for recycling carton packaging employs electrical energy to produce a jet of plasma at 15 thousand degrees Celsius to heat the plastic and aluminum mixture. With this process, plastic is transformed into paraffin and the aluminum is recovered in the form of high-purity ingot. Alcoa will use the recycled aluminum to manufacture new foil. Paraffin is sold to the Brazilian petrochemical industry. The paper, extracted during the first phase of the recycling process is transformed into cardboard by Klabin.