R&D Project Spotlight: Recycling of Plastic for Sustainable Food Packaging

The food industry is a vital part of the U.S. economy, and the food packaging market has experienced double-digit growth in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the critical role that the food and packaging supply chain plays to ensure essential products continue reaching millions of consumers safely.

 At the same time, food packaging containers account for 30% of waste generation in the U.S., and less than 50% of this volume is currently recycled. That recycling rate falls to under 30%[1] for the types of multilayer food packaging targeted in this REMADE R&D project, including the brick-shaped cartons commonly used for a wide range of liquid foods including milk, juices, soups, sauces, and more. This multilayered packaging retains the product in a commercially sterile state for months or even years, but is difficult to recycle.

 The R&D project team is working to develop a process by which these multilayer materials can be replaced by a single mono-material packaging solution produced from up to 100% recycled PET (the same plastic that water bottles are made from), which can be recycled back into the same or comparable products with minimal reprocessing, handling, and transportation. The team is validating the performance of materials and manufacturing process at industrial scale and conducting a recycling pilot with the support of a material recycling facility (MRF) to quantify recycling rates and recycled material quality.

 Following the successful completion of the project, implementation is anticipated through the Ohio Safe Food & Packaging Initiative.

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[1] Source: PET Material Flows in the US (MM lbs) - Postconsumer PET Container Recycling Activity Report by NAPCOR and APR.

R&D Project Spotlight: Transitioning to a Circular Economy for PET and Olefin Polymers

Today, the U.S. only recycles 8.4 percent of the plastic waste that is collected. Although new advanced mechanical and chemical recycling technologies hold the promise of a closed-loop circular economy for plastics in the near-term, the anticipated economic, environmental, and societal benefits of a closed loop system are still not well understood.

With a focus on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and olefin plastics, which together comprise nearly two thirds of U.S plastic production, the R&D project team successfully built a model that evaluated how the manufacturing and recycling processes in a plastics circular economy can be configured to minimize energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The model predicted that it is possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 24% compared to current recycling approaches.

In the next phase of the R&D project, the team is expanding the model to include material flow analyses, material transportation and logistics analyses, recycling process modeling, energy and environmental life cycle assessments, techno-economic analyses, and regional / national economic studies.

The model will be validated with a case study in the state of Michigan in close collaboration with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). The modeling simulation will be developed using CHEMCAD and UniSim, allowing results to be disseminated broadly to accelerate the U.S. transition a circular economy for PET and Olefin polymers. Doing so would save material, energy, and emissions associated with plastic recycling and close the annual gap of more than 1 billion pounds between the current U.S. supply and projected 2025 demand for recycled PET (rPET) for use in bottles.

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R&D Project Spotlight: Vehicle Design for High-Value Recycling of Aluminum

The embodied energy of vehicles is increasing as energy‐intensive materials such as aluminum auto body sheet (ABS) are used to deliver improved performance. Unfortunately, the current system cannot effectively recycle automotive aluminum at end-of life (EOL) because the shredded aluminum is frequently contaminated with steel rivets, steel alloys, and copper wiring. As a result, 90% of auto shred aluminum is exported and downcycled.

In addition, the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) will increase the demand for high‐quality aluminum ABS and advanced high strength steels (AHSS) for light weighting, double the amount of copper wire (thereby increasing end-of-life contamination), and potentially reduce demand for vehicle castings that could utilize the lower quality scrap.

To address these end-of-life issues upfront, the R&D project team is developing a new design for recycling tool that considers how vehicle design, recycling system infrastructure, and sheet manufacturing process decisions impact factors such as EOL recycled content, closed and open‐loop recycling rates, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and primary feedstock consumption and energy demand under different scenarios from 2020‐2050 (e.g. rapid deployment of EVs).

The tool will be integrated into the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) GREET model, which is already widely used by the car industry to quantify environmental impacts. Once developed and implemented, this tool has the potential to reduce the consumption of primary steel and aluminum by 2.35 million metric tons (MMT) and 0.19 MMT, respectively.

Project Lead

Project Participants

R&D Project Spotlight: Condition Assessment of Used Electronics for Remanufacturing

Electronics are an integral part of every industry sector from healthcare to aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics, and more. There is tremendous value in developing ways to reuse printed circuit board assemblies (PCBs) in remanufactured products, resulting in reduced cost and environmental impact.

During remanufacturing, a previously used, worn, or non-functional product or part is returned to “like-new” or “better-than-new” condition from both a quality and performance perspective. One factor that limits remanufacturing is the inability to detect solder joint and interconnect failures in printed circuit boards (PCBs). Although these defects, which account for 13% of all electronics failures, can be easily and effectively repaired once they have been identified, detecting these types of failures on used electronics is costly because inspections are performed manually.

To reduce this barrier and increase the number of PCBs that can be remanufactured, the R&D project team evaluated several inspection methods to determine whether they successfully identified defects and could be cost-effectively implemented. The team is currently building an inspection system and decision support tool that will be validated at one of the team member’s remanufacturing facilities. 

Once implemented, this technology is expected to increase PCB remanufacturing by 25-35% and reduce embodied energy by 30%.

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