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LYON, France October 12, 2015– Solvay, a leading international chemical group, has announced that its Move4earth™ project for the recycling of technical textile waste from post-industrial sources is well on target. Validation of the technology has been completed, and construction is underway for an industrial-scale facility to become operational in 2016 at the project site in Gorzów, Poland.
Move4earth™ project is one of several Solvay initiatives supported by the European Commission as part of its LIFE+ program and demonstrates the company’s ongoing strong commitment to sustainable development. The project is focused on designing, implementing and validating an innovative recycling process designed to revalue technical textile waste, initially from airbags, into high-quality polyamide 6.6 (PA6.6) grades with reduced environmental impacts to complement Solvay Engineering Plastics’ Technyl® Force portfolio of engineering polymers.
“The demand for cost-efficient yet high-performance recycled plastics is growing across all European markets, as processors and OEMs are seeking to reduce their dependency on fossil resources whose prices are rather volatile and constantly rising,” says Peter Browning, Solvay Engineering Plastics General Manager. “In addition, a revision of the waste legislation will be released by the European Commission by the end of 2015. As part of the Circular Economy Communication, new legislative initiatives on eco-design and recycling are anticipated by major customers in all PA6.6 markets. Most of them are already targeting recycle contents in their products over 20 percent by 2020.” Browning emphasized, “Move4earth underscores our efforts aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of our activities and those of our customers, and it confirms our dedicated reliance on European industrial assets.”
The project also addresses a need for more effective recycling solutions to help minimize large volumes of valuable engineering plastic waste. “More than 70 percent of all automotive airbags in Europe are made of silicone-coated nylon fabrics, mostly based on PA 6.6,” explains Richard Bourdon, Move4earth™ Project Director at Solvay. “While regulations such as directive 2000/53/EC are setting high targets for end-of-life recycling and reuse of materials in vehicles, there is no sustainable solution in place for post-consumer airbag waste in Europe. Our mid-term objective is to establish an efficient and sustainable way of re-using these resources and provide pure high-grade PA6.6 recycle compounds with stable properties near those of virgin Technyl resins for a wide range of eco-designed applications,” Bourdon concluded.
To these ends, Solvay has developed an advanced proprietary recycling technology for separating the airbag fabrics from the coating. The innovative process delivers a PA6.6 premium recycle with no significant loss in material properties, including stable viscosity and robust mechanical performance.
Next steps in Solvay’s Move4earth™ project are to bring the new facility fully on-stream to ensure a continuous target throughput under stable process conditions, and to validate value-creating options for the silicone coating by-product separated from the airbag fabrics, which can amount to 15 percent of the material flow. “The new recycle grades will be manufactured to the same high standards of quality as all Technyl resins,” adds Peter Browning. “We can guarantee a grade with up to 100 percent recycle matrix and secure supply.”
Solvay Engineering Plastics is exhibiting at FAKUMA 2015. To learn more about the Move4earth™ initiative visit our Booth 4213 in Hall B4.
Project site in Gorzów, Poland.
Courtesy Solvay
About Solvay Engineering Plastics
Engineering Plastics, the global specialist in polyamide-based engineering plastics, has for the past 60 years developed, manufactured and marketed, under the brand Technyl®, a complete range of high performance plastics for the automotive, electrical, construction and consumer goods markets. With a growth strategy bolstered by six production sites worldwide, Engineering Plastics employs its expertise and innovation capabilities in order to more closely serve the needs of its customers, through a global network of technical and R&D centers.
Learn more at WWW.TECHNYL.COM.
About Solvay
As an international chemical group, SOLVAY assists industries in finding and implementing ever more responsible and value-creating solutions. Solvay generates 90% of its net sales in activities where it is among the world's top three players. It serves many markets, varying from energy and the environment to automotive and aeronautics or electricity and electronics, with one goal: to raise the performance of its clients and improve society's quality of life. The group is headquartered in Brussels, employs about 29,400 people in 56 countries and generated 9.9 billion euros in net sales in 2013. Solvay SA is listed as SOLB.BE on NYSE Euronext in Brussels and Paris (Bloomberg: SOLB:BB - Reuters: SOLB.BR).
