Polymark shares preliminary results on identification technology

Polymark, a three-year research project funded by the European Commission, has brought together stakeholders from the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) value chain with the aim of developing a new technology that will enable the identification and sorting of polymers, including PET, in the high-value plastics scrap stream. This technology will help the recycling industry to more effectively distinguish between food-contact and nonfood-contact PET while meeting EU regulation on the use of recycled PET for food-contact applications. The technology also can be used for other purposes.

“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,” says Patrick Peuch from Petcore Europe, Brussels. “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 says it will focus on scaling up the technology to industrial conditions as well as on communicating the results and benefits to all potential users by means of workshops and trainings.

The report containing the full preliminary technical results is available on the Polymark website, www.polymark.org.

In summary, it outlines the successful 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. 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, Polymark 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 partners include Petcore Europe, European Federation of Bottled Waters (EFBW), European Association of Plastics Recycling and Recovery Organisations (EPRO), Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE), U.K. Health and Environmental Research Institute (UK-HERI), Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS), Sesotec GmbH, ColorMatrix Europe Ltd. and 4PET Recycling.