Page 47 - Plastics News Issue October 2025
P. 47
COMPANY NEWS
products," explains Martin Scheuble, Team The second pilot project is dedicated to the re-
Leader Circularity Engineering Plastics at BASF. cycling of automotive shredder residue (ASR), a
complex mix of different materials that remain
The successful processing of the recycled ma- after the removal of mainly metals and glass.
terial by the project partner ZF Group into a Thanks to close cooperation with a recycling
complex, technically sophisticated chassis com- company, it has now been possible to extract
ponent – the so-called Stabilizer Link – for Mer- the polyamides from this mixture in a largely
cedes-Benz is a notable proof of its suitability pure form using newly available sorting and pro-
for practical use. cessing technology.
Tests carried out on test specimens and the The polyamide fraction obtained in this way was
manufactured components themselves show used as the starting material for a new solvent-
that depolymerization enables polyamide com- based recycling process as part of the pilot pro-
pounds that can be used without compromising ject. In this process, the polymer chain is not split
on performance or other chemical and physical but selectively dissolved with the aid of a suita-
properties. ble solvent, then purified and finally reprocessed
into PA6 compounds.
This technology was validated using a chain
guide rail in series production at Mercedes-Benz.
The components were manufactured and suc-
cessfully tested under near-series conditions by
the project partner Pöppelmann as part of the
pilot project.
"The project impressively demonstrates that sol-
vent-based recycling is a practical alternative for
plastics that are difficult to recycle mechanically.
It makes an important contribution to the holistic
A recycled PA6 compound was created from the circular economy - from the car back into the
polyamide fraction obtained by solvent-based car," emphasizes Steffen Meyer, Team Leader
recycling, validated on a near-series chain guide Production Technology at Pöppelmann.
rail (production: Pöppelmann) for Mercedes- Source - https://www.autocarpro.in
Benz.
Solvent-based polyamide recycling from auto-
motive shredder residue
October 2025 PLASTICS NEWS 47
