Recycling of Polymer Materials for Automobile

Abstract

The recent growing interest in the global environment protection and resourceconservation has necessitated the development of recycling technology in various fields.In the field of polymer materials for automobile as well, especially, technological development forlarge plastic parts is required.Most of large plastic parts are painted by thermoset resin orlaminated with mutually incompatible polymers.So, the recycled materials obtained bysimply melting and kneading have poor mechanical properties because the matrix resins of therecycled materials contain paint fragments or incompatible polymers to the resin.So, it isnecessary to develop the recycling technology eliminating the default by the paint fragmentsand the incompatible polymers.Recently, several recycling technologies were developedwith twin screw reactive extruder.In those technologies, paint fragments are decomposed byreactive agent and polymers are mutually compatibilized by reactive compatibilizer undershear force given by the extruder.In this paper, recent studies were introduced on recyclingtechnologies with reactive extruder for large plastic parts of automobiles, such as paintedbumpers and inner compounds containing foam material.