麻豆传媒高清版鈥檚 Biocomposites Centre part of recycling project COtooCLEAN awarded $3million as winner of Alliance Prize
COtooCLEAN - an innovative multi-participant project by 鈥 was announced as the winner of the which aims to bring about change by incentivising transformative solutions that can help to address the plastic waste challenge.
Presented live to global brand owners and investors, the event was the culmination of months of review by a panel of judges who whittled some 600 registrations down to 60 fully qualifying submissions and then down to five finalists.
Following a final pitch by the five finalist teams at the New York Stock Exchange, Professor Edward Kosior, founder of Nextek, was awarded the prestigious prize of $US3million to fast-track COtooCLEAN鈥檚 groundbreaking process to decontaminate post-consumer plastic films back to food-grade quality.
麻豆传媒高清版鈥檚 Biocomposites Centre will use its expertise to undertake life cycle assessment, examine process optimization and investigate scale-up, using its laboratory scale CO2 equipment and pilot scale plastic extrusion facilities.
North Wales based Suprex Ltd, a spin out company from 麻豆传媒高清版 that specializes in the development of applications of supercritical CO2 (scCO2) is also one of the project partners. Using CO2 as a green solvent, the company is able to extract fine chemicals from a range of feedstocks. Suprex will be running the pilot scale scCO2 equipment, and take the lead in the design and construction of the new equipment that will assist the large scale trials of the post-consumer films.
COtooCLEAN aims to fill the gap in the recycling stream where food-safe post-consumer polyolefin films are currently missing. Their unique commercial process can be integrated into mechanical recycling operations and can treat printed and multi-layer films to make them much easier to recycle.
On winning the Alliance Prize, Professor Kosior commented, 鈥We now have the potential to make a major contribution to the circularity of films in a global context.鈥
麻豆传媒高清版 are proud to be part of the innovative COtooCLEAN project, which aims to create a solution to one of the world鈥檚 pressing problems: that of plastic waste. By drawing on the expertise of our material science researchers in the Biocomposites Centre and working in partnership with our industry partner Suprex Ltd, we can apply our knowledge to help increase the rate of plastic recycling. We are really looking forward to continuing to work with all the Nextek partners on this game-changing project.
Andrew Beggin, Managing Director of Suprex added, 鈥We are delighted and excited to be part of a project that has now won international recognition for the contribution it can make to a circular economy, particularly in an area that has previously been considered one of the more intractable for plastic recycling鈥.
Steve Sikra, AEPW VP Americas, Alliance to End Plastic Waste said, "The COtooCLEAN process offers an impactful solution for the high levels of flexible film waste growing around the world. By enabling聽 food-grade film-to-film advanced mechanical recycling, the process will improve circularity of flexible films by diverting film waste from landfill and lesser value outlets.
"The relatively simple modification to the existing mechanical recycling process makes the potential impact of COtooCLEAN even greater because of its scalability to global adoption over time.鈥
