Material Combinations / Recycling

In the field of polymer joining technology, numerous methods exist for the production of material composites, such as welding, pressing, and assembly or injection molding of composites. Depending on the method, parameter settings, and material pairing, multi-material composites can be created that are difficult or nearly impossible to separate again without significant effort.

Due to resource scarcity and regulatory requirements, the topic of plastic recycling is becoming increasingly important. In addition to energy recovery, material recycling is particularly attractive, as the base material can be reused in other products. The reprocessing of polymers is state of the art. However, recycling composite materials, whose individual components cannot be separated or only with great difficulty in an economical manner, is a challenge that is currently being addressed in research at the LKT. In particular, the interactions between individual components, the characterization of resulting properties, and the influence of multiple processing steps are the focus of this research.

EU Project T-REX

• Textile Recycling Excellence
• Homepage: T-REX
• Research at LKT: process development for sorting and recycling of textiles