| A recent study by Teknor Apex, USA, could lead to construction of a US plant for recovering high-quality flexible vinyl compound from wire and cable, coated fabric, and other composites that until now have defied efforts to separate and recover the constituent materials economically. The study, to be completed by the end of 2004, will determine if the resource stream of scrap composites and the number of customers for recovered compound are sufficiently great to warrant a US venture to implement Solvay�s Vinyloop� technology. �Properties of flexible vinyl recovered by the Vinyloop process are nearly identical to those of the original formulation. In addition, the process could be employed to recover and recycle in pure form any non-vinyl substrate that is comprised of only one material and has reuse value�, commented Mr Peter M. Galland, Vinyloop project manager for Teknor Apex.
Teknor Apex is seeking input from potential participants who could supply annual resource streams in excess of 250,000 pounds of the vinyl component and would buy back the recovered vinyl at 70 to 80% of the original cost. Besides wire and cable companies, likely participants would include manufacturers of products as diverse as automotive instrument panel skins, wall coverings, and flooring.
Developed in the 1990s in the Solvay laboratories in Brussels, Belgium, the Vinyloop� process is a mechanical recycling process in which a selective solvent dissolves the PVC resin matrix, releasing the additives and the secondary materials. When the secondary materials are separated, the dissolved PVC resin and the additives are recovered and, this is what makes the process so original, precipitated, resulting in a regenerated PVC compound. In 2002, the first plant based on the process started-up in Ferrara, Italy. This demonstration facility has a nominal annual capacity to recover approximately 8,500 tonnes of vinyl compound from a composite waste stream of 10,000 tonnes). Recently Solvay and a venture partner in Japan announced plans to build a commercial-scale Vinyloop plant in that country, with start-up planned for 2005.
Vinyloop Ferrara SpA - Via Marconi 73 - I-44100 Ferrara
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.vinyloop.com
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