Novel and Eco-friendly Plasma Technology for Reusing and Recycling Plastics as Secondary Raw Materials

The production and usage of plastics and their ratio in the waste have been increasing since 1960. In 2016, 27.1 million tons of plastic waste was collected in Europe. Due to limitation in current disposal methods, the reuse and recycling rates of plastics containing hazardous substances, contaminants and thermoset, cross-linked structures, are very low, only 30%. The remaining non-recycled plastics (NRP) cannot be currently returned into the economy but are landfilled or incinerated with the ratios of 31% and 39%, respectively. This represents a major threat to plants and animals both on land and at sea, as well as to human health. There is an urgent need to tackle the environmental problems that plastics represent and to return the used plastics into the economic production. In PLASMENTOR, a multidisciplinary consortium aims to develop a new two-stage plasma reactor concept which is eco-friendly, modular and innovative and to facilitate for political and socio-economic strategies that can ensure implementation of this technological innovation. Reactor #1 will be able to recover recycle parts from NRP, before their complete transformation into syngas and slags in Reactor #2. Due to very high temperature and reactive conditions in plasma Reactor #2, all organic hazardous substances, including toxic and microbial contaminants, are degraded into very simple molecules to form syngas and inorganics and heavy metals will be trapped in the inert glassy structures. All by-products have growing market values as secondary raw material. With the usage of PLASMENTOR; -The disposal causes only 1% of residues, compared to 90% and 25% generated by landfill and incineration respectively. -Rates of harmful emissions will be dramatically reduced. The dioxin and furan emissions which are among the most toxic chemicals will be 240 times lower than classical incineration; SOx and NOx will be diminished by 8.3 and 3.8 times respectively; -52% less CO2 emission than the incineration.