JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #118 - January/February 2018 - 13

Inauguration of the composites and recycling platform

consolidated
continuous industrial pilot project by
panels up to 10 mm thick.
2020.
The
applications
under
How long did the project last, consideration include the
and what applications are be- fabrication of small and
ing considered?
medium-sized series for niche
F. R.: The Ecotreve project markets, replacing traditional
lasted five years and ended materials, for example in
at year's end 2016. The capital equipment for industry
viability of the technologies or transportation, using
used on this line is now "middle-range" materials with
proven. Cetim and the levels of mechanical strength
Cetim-Cermat have filed or somewhere between shortare in the process of filing fibre-reinforced plastics and
many patents. The centre continuous-fibre-reinforced
is planning to generate an composites.

The Thermosaïc® pilot recycling line developed by the Cetim-Cermat

estimate that the global market for thermoplastic composites is now growing by
more than 5% per year, and
should be worth more than
ten billion dollars by 2020!
To encourage the emergence of a recycling stream
in France, the Cetim-Cermat
and Cetim decided as early as 2011 to explore this
field, and launched the
Ecotreve project to manufacture high-performance materials from plastic and composite waste using a circular
economy strategy. The project was led in partnership
with three manufacturers
(Paprec Plastiques, thermoforming specialist Plastiform,
and plastic former Airépur
Industries) and two laboratories (the Material Science
Institute in Mulhouse and

the Icube laboratory for engineering, computer and imaging science in Strasbourg).
Under the project, a pilot line
was built based on an unusual
principle for recycling thermoplastic composites, and
especially those reinforced
with glass fibre, which account for 90% of the market.
Inspired by wood
The Cetim-Cermat worked
with its partners to develop
the Thermosaïc® technology, drawing inspiration from
oriented strand board (OSB),
which is used in building and
construction. The idea was to
get away from standard mechanical methods that grind
the waste to produce reusable
powders or pellets, and from
chemical methods that separate the matrix from the rein-

forcements to recover the fibre. The materials from the
new technology have high
mechanical strength, due to
the sufficient size of the reinforcements (thanks to
the grinding process, which
maintains fibre lengths from
30 mm up to 200 mm). Their
original structure makes
them quasi-isotropic materials, easier to form using
thermocompression or thermoforming than standard
continuous-fibre composites.
An innovative
modular line
The recycling line is unusual
not only because of its multi-functionality (it can be
used to upgrade a wide range
of matrices and reinforcements), but also, and especially, because of its modu-

larity. It is possible, between
two production runs, to replace the input modules with
modules that serve to unwind
films and reinforcements,
which enables the line to
convert to ThermoPRIME®,
the other recycling technology developed by the CetimCermat and its partners.
ThermoPRIME®
involves
combining long-fibre or fabric reinforcements with recycled plastics to produce composite materials with much
higher mechanical properties
than the original materials
(5-10 times more mechanical strength), while screening
out the plastic's loss of properties once it has aged and
been recycled.
More information:
www.cetim-cermat.com

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N°118 January - February 2018

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #118 - January/February 2018
