Das Projekt "Magnetic sorting and ultrasound sensor technologies for production of high purity secondary polyolefins from waste (W2PLASTICS)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Technische Universiteit Delft durchgeführt. Objective: The European consumption of plastics increased from 24,6 Mtons in 1993 to 39,7 Mtons in 2003 and its growth rate exceeds that of the economy as a whole. At the same time, polymer recyclers and manufacturing industries have a problem buying feed materials and secondary polymers of sufficient volume and quality, as a result of the pull of China and India on all raw material resources. The alternative of using more primary plastics has a range of environmental impacts and needs more resources (about two kg oil for one kg plastic). The polymer resources in complex wastes, such as WEEE, household waste and ASR (ACEA: 7.5 million tons of shredder residue in the EU17 in 2002), are largely unused, because of the problem to produce high-purity products from such sources at acceptable costs. Today just one million out of 14 million ton polyolefin s yearly sold in Europe is being recycled. W2Plastics aims to develop cost-effective and clean technology based on Magnetic Density Separation (MDS) and Ultrasound process control to recover high-purity polyolefin s from complex wastes. A substantial effort is spent on making the new technologies fit in between the state-of-the-art technology of waste processors and the demands of the compounding and manufacturing industries by defining standards and best practices as well as effective quality-control tools (hyperspectral imaging). The integrated set of technologies and standards aims at changing the status of complex wastes to a resource of high-purity polyolefin s for a wide range of industries.