The third meeting of the European research project SupercleanQ was held at the Fraunhofer Institute in Karlsruhe on October 16-17, 2012. After ten months of activity, the researchers discussed the origin and identity of potential contaminants in post-consumer food-grade PET and methods for detecting them.
The three-year project is funded under the Seventh Framework Program (FP7) and carried out by a consortium of 12 partners, including research centres, associations (among them Assocomaplast), and small-medium companies. The aim is to develop quality assurance tools and procedures for plastics recycling processes complying with Regulation 282/2008/EC for food contact applications. The tools will be applied to a new process for recycling coloured, multi-layered PET, which cannot be processed by current PET recycling facilities, into food grade products.