The Chemours Company, a leader in, among others, titanium technologies, has announced that it has become a participant in the ongoing Remove2Reclaim project. The multi-partner project, the full title of which is ‘Remove2Reclaim – Recycling of plastics and titanium dioxide via advanced dissolution and separation techniques for plastic additive removal’, launched in 2020 in Belgium to explore extraction routes to remove and recover additives and polymers from recycled plastics. The main focus, as the title suggests, is on titanium dioxide, or TiO2.
The project aims to develop commercial-scale detection methods and solvent-based extraction routes to remove additives, such as titanium dioxide, from different polymer matrices and to reuse both the titanium dioxide and polymer in new products - an approach that could serve as an add-on to existing mechanical and chemical polymer recycling schemes. Current commercial scale recycling technologies do not allow polymers and additives to be effectively removed and separated, limiting the potential applications and overall quality of products made with recycled plastic.
Pigmented plastics are a challenge to the recycling process. Not only do dyed and pigmented plastics that are recycled have a lower market value compared to clear or transparent plastics, their presence can also affect the performance and properties of these materials.
During the first year of the project, research partners from across the value chain developed a sorting mechanism to effectively identify plastic wastes that contained TiO2. They also successfully determined solvent-based extraction routes to remove TiO2 from different polymer matrices. Other project milestones included developing methods and equipment to detect TiO2 in specific polymer matrices, recovering TiO2 from the polymer by dissolution route, and eventually reusing the TiO2 and polymer in new products.
“Through the Remove2Reclaim initiative, we hope to help crack the code on effective plastic recycling, achieving a new level of circularity for the industry,” said Steven De Backer, EMEA Technical Marketing Manager at Chemours. “This initiative has the potential to reclaim thousands of tons of TiO2 from different end-of-life streams, reducing raw material demands, and creating a new TiO2 supply stream for our customers.
It should also be noted that an additional challenge to the recycling of TiO2 is the European Commission’s classification under the CLP Regulation of TiO2 as a category 2 carcinogen by inhalation. The classification applies only to mixtures in powder form containing 1% or more of titanium dioxide which is in the form of or incorporated in particles with aerodynamic diameter of ≤ 10 μm.
“At Chemours, we aspire to be the most sustainable TiO2 enterprise in the world, and that requires applying our expertise to some of the world’s greatest challenges, including plastic circularity,” said Ed Sparks, President of Titanium Technologies at Chemours. “We’re committed to leveraging responsible chemistry and cross-industry collaboration to solve our customers' challenges with minimal impact on our shared planet.
The “Remove2Reclaim” project is funded by the Flemish Agency of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and organised under the umbrella of the Flemish spearhead cluster Catalisti. It includes a collaboration of the public and private sectors, including Chemours as the project coordinator, INEOS Styrolution, Lybover, Deceuninck, Matco Plastics, Centexbel, VITO, Ghent University, and KU Leuven. The project also received funding from VLAIO, the Flanders Innovation and Entrepreneurship Agency.