The Polymark consortium has published preliminary technical results outlining the development of food-contact-approved chemical markers to mark targeted polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging and a detection technology suitable for high speed sorting.
The three-year research project funded by the European Commission brings together stakeholders from the PET value chain with the aim of developing a new technology to identify and sort polymers, including PET, in the high-value plastics waste stream. The new technology is expected to help the recycling industry more effectively distinguish between food-contact and non-food contact PET while meeting the EU regulation on the use of recycled PET for food-contact applications. The technology can also be used for other purposes, Polymark says.
“After 18 months of work and a good project review with the European Commission in June, we are now pleased to present the first technical results of the Polymark project,” explains Patrick Peuch from Petcore Europe. “Our research partners have successfully developed a complete technology package. By publically releasing these results, in agreement with our Polymark Consortium and the approval of the European Commission, we aim to raise early awareness and to give unconstrained access to the widest number of interested parties for their faster consideration and longer-term planning.”
During the next 18 months, Polymark will focus on scaling up the technology to industrial conditions as well as on communicating the results and benefits to potential users by means of workshops and training.
The report containing the full preliminary technical results is publicly available at www.polymark.org. It outlines the development of a prototype, flexible, coating-based approach for marking PET bottles, detailing the combination of suitable food-contact approved chemical markers and polymeric matrices used, Polymark says.
Removal of the marker following sorting is demonstrated so that marker accumulation and associated potential for false positive detection in the long term is minimized, the consortium says.
Detector technology suitable for high-speed sorting was developed in parallel to the marking technology, and initial results in this area are also reported.
Polymark is a three-year research project funded by the European Commission under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013 and grant agreement No. 311777).
Polymark partners include Petcore Europe, European Federation of Bottled Waters (EFBW), European Association of Plastics Recycling and Recovery Organisations (EPRO), Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE), UK Health and Environmental Research Institute (UK-HERI), Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS), Sesotec GmbH, ColorMatrix Europe Ltd and 4PET Recycling.