During PET production, product use and PET recycling, the PET product quality can deteriorate significantly by:
- Thermal degradation
- The presence of solid contaminants.
- The presence of taste & hazardous substances (such as resp. limonene & benzene)
- Discolouration that affects the PET product appearance in visibility applications.
Therefore, cost-effective processing and obtaining the right and safe recycled PET quality is essential for both PET recyclers, PET packaging manufacturers and brand owners. Chemical analyses techniques are vital to monitor and control the quality of the PET polymers and packaging. It contributes to improve product safety risks and saving costs.
The White Paper explains in-depth how:
- Substances such as limonene, benzene & acetaldehyde are frequently present in rPET. Typical limonene, benzene & acetaldehyde concentrations in rPET detected by EMMTEC are 0.1, 0.05 and 0.5 mg/kg (ppm), respectively.
- PET flakes and recycled PET typically contain respectively 113,000 and 14,000 particle contaminations. This is respectively 64 and 8 times more than present in virgin PET! The more particle contaminations, the more haziness in rPET packaging. The unique EMMTEC Partisol analysis method detects contaminations in PET and helps PET recyclers & packaging makers to improve the product quality.
- How the color and intrinsic viscosity change by recycling PET.
