Recycling of multi-layered waste packaging

The market of multi-layered packaging has been strongly increasing during the last years and thus the opportunity to recycle waste coming from this kind of materials has been taken into considered. The goal of this research work has been paper and aluminium recovering from multi-layered packaging (composite material) for food applications. In order to recycle the component materials, liberation has been achieved through cryo-comminution processes using liquid nitrogen as a refrigerant agent both for preconditioning the materials to be comminuted and for lowering the temperature of the milling chamber during the comminution process. Recovery of paper and aluminium after comminution has been obtained through a two-stage separation circuit: a classification step followed a flotation step. High grades in aluminium and paper have been reached in the final products. The good results obtained on a lab scale should be taken into consideration for the setting up a recycling industrial process.