Extrusion International 1-2025

40 Extrusion International 1/2025 RECYCLING, FILM EXTRUSION Collaboration – Production of Stretch Film that Incorporates Recycled Content As interest in recycling has grown in importance in recent years, a wide variety of plastic waste streams are being evaluated for their recyclability potential. Important criteria are the expected annual volume, potential contamination and the material composition of the streams. LDPE/LLDPE lm has existing collection systems in many European countries that have been in place for many years to provide this type of material for recycling. As markets demand recycled content in a broader range of applications, a challenge is to produce clear shrink, stretch or blown lm that maintains properties while in - corporating recycled content. In this context, new capacities have been built in Eu- rope and worldwide or existing plants have been ret- ro tted with improved sorting, washing steps or addi - tional melt ltration systems in order to be able to offer high-quality polyethylene (rPE) streams for recycling. However, even LDPE/LLDPE that has undergone exten- sive mechanical processing, can be dif cult to convert into new lm on conventional production lines, which is why the companies Colines, ExxonMobil Signature Poly- mers and Gneuss have joined forces in a development project to develop a viable lm production process with potential cost savings. In particular, the so-called gels and black dots are dis- ruptive factors that could be minimized with the appro- priate materials from ExxonMobil Signature Polymers and a pressure-constant screen changer fromGneuss on a highly exible cast lm line from Colines. ExxonMobil Signature Polymers´s technical experts have conducted trials using PCR material (Post Con- sumer Recycle) derived from stretch lm in combination with Exceed Tough m 3812 high performance polyeth- ylene and observed a reduction in the size of the larger polymer gels. "With most of the commercial PCR grades available on the European market today, extrusion lines often cannot run continuously. Continuous ltration can help to run extrusion lines for longer production periods. Production line with Gneuss RSFgenius ltration system in Europe RSFgenius ltration system in operation at Colines’ technical center