Senbis Polymer Innovations whitepaper examines PET recycling

Senbis Polymer Innovations B.V., a company based in the Netherlands that provides R&D services and produces sustainable polymers that are sold by Senbis Sustainable Products, has released a whitepaper that looks at how recycled PET (rPET) can be evaluated and modified into products that are fit for purpose.

The company notes that during PET production, product use and recycling, the quality of the polymer can deteriorate from thermal degradation, chemical and mechanical factors and the presence of contaminants.

The whitepaper describes mechanical and chemical recycling technologies and their associated challenges.

In mechanical recycling processes, rPET can contain solid and substance impurities that can affect quality, the company says. The whitepaper explains Senbis solutions to quantify the size distribution of solid particles in rPET by means of the Partisol (particles in solution) test, which dissolves the polymer matrix and flows it into a cuvette before using a microscope to detect particles can be detected down to 1 micrometer in size.

The Senbis filtration test enables PET converters to assess the effectiveness of removing solid impurities in rPET critical converting processes as the pressure increase from low-quality rPET could be twice that of high-quality rPET, the company says. In addition, Senbis says it can help to optimize rPET purification and polymer quality by solid-state polymerization.

Senbis also says it can perform fiber spinnability trials on rPET to compare virgin and rPET quality and spinning property performance on pilot and semi-industrial scales.

To request the white paper, email info@senbis.com.