CONTRIBUTION OF PELLENC ST TO THE FUTURE OF BIO-BASED PLASTICS
1. THE COMPANY
Pellenc ST is a manufacturer of optical sorters dedicated to the recovery and valorization of materials. With more than 300 machines installed per year, either in Materials Recovery Facilities or at Recyclers sites, we are a major player in the World. Our key objective is to promote the circular economy in order to reduce the carbon footprint of our society. For this, we provide high technology industrial solutions at scale, ensuring profitability for our customers, and offering service and technology upgrades along the lifetime of our equipment.
2. PROJECT OBJECTIVES
Bio-based plastics (i.e plastics produced from plants) have been around for several years, but are still struggling to make their way into the packaging world, as well as in marine applications. The European project SEALIVE has gathered 24 partners from November 2019 to March 2023 in order to answer key questions for their future.
- Can we produce them at scale, without significant use of fossil fuels, and without competing with food sources?
- Can we sort them from other plastics, and from each other?
- Can we manage their end of life in a sustainable way?
- One solution is biodegradation in industrial composting facilities, or in natural conditions (at home, or after a reasonable time if left in place at the end of their useful life). This can answer the issue of plastic persistence in the environment.
- Another solution is recycling, and preferably mechanical recycling. If successful, this will decrease the need for agricultural land to produce them.
And based on this, one final objective is to contribute to shaping a European policy for bio-based plastics.
3. RESULTS
Pellenc ST has been most active in the sorting tasks, led by our partner the Urbaser company.
We have developed a new spectrometer, optimized for biological products, especially bioplastics.
In house tests
In our premises, we have performed many detection and sorting tests, and the conclusions are very encouraging. We can separate:
Field sorting trials
We have implemented our latest generation NIR Mistral+ CONNECT in the Urbaser sorting plant in Zaragoza, on the packaging line. In an excellent collaboration with the Urbaser team, we have sorted PLA, the only bio-based plastic available in industrial amounts, i.e. several hundreds kilograms. Objects mixed into the stream were trays and cutlery. Objects were either new (green trays or cutlery below) or partially composted during 3 or 6 days (white trays below).
Industrial results
Industrial results (at 3 m/s) were excellent:
- Total sorted (2 campaigns) ≈ 600 kg
- Efficiencies: 95% (trays), 85% (cutlery)
- Purities: 87%
- Negligible amounts of contaminants ejected as PLA: ≈ 0.1 % of input stream.
4. LONG TERM PERSPECTIVES
- We have answered question #2: Bio-based plastics can be sorted from other packaging. They should be collected in this stream, because users can’t tell the difference with other plastics.
- We have answered question #3: once sorted, products can be sent to industrial composting, or to recycling. For composting, partners have shown that it is feasible. As for recycling, it will only be feasible for a resin that is massively present to justify a recycling route. Today, this would mean PLA.
- Question #1 remains: today, PLA is made from a food crop, sugar cane. Feasibility of other sources or other resins will have to be investigated in further projects.
“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 862910 (SEALIVE). This output reflects the views of the authors and the Research Executive Agency (REA) is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.”
