Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and polycarbonate (PC) are two widely used transparent thermoplastics. They both work as brilliant alternatives to glass and are costly engineered plastics. Both PMMA and PC are very prone to scratches, thus they are laminate with protective polyethylene (PE) film. During the manufacturing of products using PMMA and PC sheets, a lot of solid plastic production waste is generated, still laminated with PE.

For mechanical recycling of PC and PMMA, respectively, the PE foil has to be removed. Up to now there is no technology available and this step is done manually. In this project, a delamination process based on green chemistry principles has been developed. After the production waste is collected, it is further shredded into smaller granules. In a 30 minutes process, PE is delaminated from PMMA or PC in a continuously stirred heated organic solution. Once delaminated, the production waste is cleaned. The delaminated production waste is then separated from one another by density separation and dried. As a result, homogeneous fractions of PMMA and PC, respectively, and PE are obtained. Significant tests such as hardness, melting point, and IR spectroscopy, showed that the quality of the plastic was maintained after it was processed. Furthermore, preliminary material flow cost analysis gives evidence that the process is bound to return a profit.