Development of an Advanced Extrusion Process for the Reduction of Volatile and Semi-Volatile Organic Compounds of Recycled Hdpe from Fuel Tanks

Abstract

Plastic fuel tanks are typically made by high density polyethylene (HDPE). The easiness of the dismantling procedure from vehicles and the intrinsic recyclability of HDPE allows them to be accounted in the “white list” of recyclable components. However, the strong odor produced by the volatile and semi-volatile compounds absorbed during the life, drastically reduces its actual recyclability. In this paper, we present an innovative extrusion process specifically designed to stripping out these contaminants. Different processing conditions were tested and the obtained materials were characterized by gas-chromatography and by mechanical and thermal data. The Principal Components Analysis approach was applied on the entire dataset collected highlighting the effect of the processing conditions on the residual contamination.The developed extrusion process allows one to obtain a material that can be employed in applications which require enhanced performance, therefore, further reducing the environmental impact of the end-of-life vehicles.

Keywords: Extrusion, HDPE recycling, contaminants reduction, odor reduction, plastic fuel tanks, headspace sampling