Recycled plastic: A new recycling method for fresh fish boxes allows to obtain insulations for construction
The project EPS-FISH to recycle expanded polystyrene wastes from fresh fish packages finished in late December 2015 with good results.
This project, developed by ACTECO PRODUCTOS Y SERVICIOS, S.L., with the assessment of AIMPLAS, the Plastics Technology Centre, has been funded by CDTi within the call EEA GRANTS.
The project’s target achieved has been obtaining a recycled material with high quality and without odours from wastes of EPS boxes of fish and other sea products. These wastes were not usually recycled in Spain, nor in other European countries, since odour intensifies more when being pressed and retained to reduce the waste volume, due to an initial low intensity of them.
This way, this kind of wastes were, until now, pressed and sent out of the European Union for their recovery, what used to suppose a loss of resources for the European Union and, in general, a CO2 emission, what is directly related to the climate change.
With the project implementation and by means of applying decontamination technologies and methodologies, the waste initial odour has been reduced, what has allowed to obtain an adequate recycled material. To obtain this material, several techniques have been used, with good results: pre-treatment of wastes, intensive washing and extrusion with supercritical fluids (sc-CO2).
The recycled material obtained has been validated by means of manufacturing XPS and EPS insulating panels with adequate physical-mechanical properties for their use in the construction sector. This last point was so critical due to the final application required. This situation allows a direct commercialisation of the product developed.
In this line, ACTECO looks forward to working with wastes complementary to those who were the project target to increase the market niche and the amount of high-quality recycled plastic obtained.
