Recycling and Circular Economy

GAIKER's research and technological activity in mechanical recycling is based on the treatment of material flows from all types of post-consumer and pre-consumer waste: light packaging, end-of-life vehicles (ELV), waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), construction and demolition waste (CDW), composites, textiles and emerging waste. Recycling technologies are researched, applied, evaluated and adapted to separate materials from these waste streams once they have been characterised and conditioned. The final objective is to design and evaluate specific recycling processes to obtain recovered material fractions of the highest quality that can be returned to the economic cycles.

Chemical recycling is based on the use of standard and self-designed chemical reactors (tank and fluidised bed type), including control systems and auxiliary equipment, ranging from laboratory and bench scale to pilot scale in order to test the performance and convert waste plastics (thermoplastics, composites) and biomass into products (monomers, base chemicals, oils or gases) by means of solvolysis and pyrolysis processes. This group of activities also includes the development and characterisation of refuse derived fuels (RDFs) linked to energy recovery or the use of solvents to separate and selectively recover materials and chemical elements in complex structures, such as multi-layers and dispersions.

Sustainability assessment covers environmental, social and economic perspectives of technologies, processes, products and services. In-depth knowledge of sustainability assessment methodologies and extensive experience in fields, such as end-of-life treatment processes, development of new materials, etc. strengthens GAIKER's position as a reference in life cycle assessment, covering environmental (LCA), social (SLC) and economic (LCC) perspectives. Assessment studies are used to identify impacts and support product re-design (eco-design), provide indicators (e.g. carbon footprint, environmental footprint, circularity index) or develop customised assessment tools.