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From January 21 to 24, the International Electronics Recycling Congress IERC counted on its 19^th edition with the presence of the PLAST2bCLEANED project in Salzburg (Austria).

The person in charge of presenting this project that will develop a safe recycling process for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment was Lein Tange, Sustainability Director at ICL and partner of the PLAST2bCLEANED consortium.

IERC is the electronics recycling industry’s event bringing together more than 500 recycling professionals from around the globe. The 2020 edition had discussions about the latest recycling technologies, regulations, manufacturing processes and value of raw materials.

On January 14 and 15, the PLAST2bCLEANED project hosted its second General Assembly meeting in Pfinztal (Germany) at Fraunhofer ICT facilities.

During two days, the consortium members presented the advancements on all the work packages (WP) contemplated within the scope: Preprocessing, sensing and sorting; Process development; System integration; Dissemination, exploitation and capacity building. Performance testing of process and products; Environmental and economic assessment, and Financials & Quality and Risk assessment.

Likewise, TNO and Fraunhofer ICT, as PLAST2bCLEANED’s responsible for the WP corresponding to Process development and System integration organized a joint workshop to gather inputs from all the participant partners in these tasks.

To conclude the day, Fraunhofer ICT offered a guided visit to its facilities to explain where they will carry out the tasks of dissolution and additive removal experiments in the pilot units and develop the integrated Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) recycling unit, among other tasks.

The European Industry & Energy Summit (EIES), hosted in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) on December 10 and 11, received a presentation on the PLAST2bCLEANED project.

Gerard van der Laan, from TNO Circular Plastics, was the presenter for showcasing the PLAST2bCLEANED main goals in the development of a recycling process for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) plastics.

This 2019 edition of the EIES summit has focused on a variety of subjects such as emission-free hydrogen, chemical recycling of plastics, energy efficiency, electrification, carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) and biobased chains, among others.

PLAST2bCLEANED was part of a conference and an interactive roundtable discussion with the value chain players on the chemical recycling of plastics. Here, Gerard and Rob de Ruiter, together with the Dutch National Platform for Chemical Recycling and multiple industrial stakeholders, gave attendees an overview of the current processes and new innovations. Likewise, it was also discussed the role of chemical recycling as a complementary technology to mechanical recycling in the transition to circular plastics.

The Horizon 2020 project PLAST2bCLEANED was presented at the Fire Resistance in Plastics. an encounter hosted in Cologne (Germany) on December, 4 and 5.

Both Lein Tange, Sustainability Director at ICL Group, and Karen Jenssens, Product Manager Plastics at Campine, mentioned PLAST2bCLEANED main objectives and innovations as part as their conferences ‘Creating a circular economy for bromine-containing, flame retardant plastics by the use of innovative and sustainable recycling technologies’ and ‘An evaluation of the sustainable use of halogenated/antimony trioxide flame retardant systems in different end-use applications’, respectively.

PLAST2bCLEANED was also showcased in the panel discussion ‘Closing the loop of plastics containing flame retardants: how to support the recyclability of these plastics?’, where Lein, together with representatives from Flame Retardants Europe, Campine, Fraunhofer, and Pinfa discussed on the possibilities of recycling plastics materials on a more efficient and sustainable way.

On October 28, representatives from TNO and ICL met at TNO’s facilities in Delft (The Netherlands) to discuss further on the tasks to be carried out for the PLAST2Bcleaned work package 2 (Process development: dissolution and recovery).

The meeting, where the partners shared their knowledge on the materials and process and discussed the challenges that can be expected, included a tour through the laboratory and lab pilot plant hall of TNO.

In the picture: From left to right, Hans van der Meer (TNO), Leon Geers (TNO), Mark Roelands (TNO), Lucie Prins (TNO), Annemieke van de Runstraat (TNO), Eyal Eden (ICL), Eric Sitters (ICL) and Lein Tange (ICL). In the background, TNOs Möbius1.0 lab pilot for executing the WP2 superheated solvent process development.

On October, 29 the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) organised a joint workshop in Brussels (Belgium) where Coolrec had the opportunity to disseminate the PLAST2bCLEANED project.

Tom Caris, Project Manager at Coolrec was the person in charge to explain the audience the challenges in recycling plastics-the scope for PLAST2bCLEANED, from products with a long lifetime, and how standardization can facilitate that. Tom participated as well on the panel discussion afterwards.

The workshop entitled ‘Materials – Value chains for circular economy: metal, wood, plastic and concrete’ addressed the challenges linked to the circularity of material-use at every phase of the value chain, and also identified specific standardization gaps for metal, wood, plastic and concrete circularity.

TNO, the coordinator partner of the PLAST2bCLEANED project, attended the 12^th edition of the European Congress of Chemical Engineering, hosted in Florence (Italy) from September15 to 19.

In this congress, Marinke Wijngaard, Circular Economy & Environment at TNO, gave a plenary lecture on chemical recycling of complex plastics (gasification, pyrolysis and dissolution of plastics), where she explained the main objectives of the PLAST2bCLEANED project.

The European Federation of Chemical Engineering is the organization responsible for this congress, celebrated every two years to present the latest innovations and works in the chemical engineering sector.