• polyolefin
• Polyolefin mixtures
• recycled materials
• recycled plastic
• recycling

In the last decades plastic materials has become essential in our everyday life and in several industrial and commercial sectors. The huge production of plastic, especially single use objects and packings, lead to great volumes of waste every year, making the disposal of plastic a big deal all around the world. Making polymer materials more sustainable it’s one of the greatest challenge in nowadays materials science. Thanks to their peculiar characteristics: light weight, low cost, extremely easy and wide range formability; polyolefin are the perfect material for disposal use, packings and many other applications and are really difficult to be replaced. Beside searching for different materials and new solutions, reducing the production of virgin material is a key element to moderate the impact on the environment. The aim of this thesis falls within this context. The work presented was carried out through an internship at Revet S.p.a., a leading industry in integrated waste cycle management, that serves about 200 municipalities and over 80% of the Tuscan population. During the internship all the plant, situated in Pontedera (PI), and the process of recycling was accurately studied: from the waste to the granules of recycled plastic, secondary raw material. So the purpose of this thesis is to analyse, with reference to Revet S.p.a. plant, the recycling process as a whole: investigating the limitations of different recycled polyolefin mixtures and possible developments to be carry on in the future to make recycling process more efficient. The first part of this work concern a project of flow analysis of the selection and recycling plants streams. It has been carried out in order to meet company’s needs too. Its means were to detect deficiencies in traceability, to assess selection process efficiency and to identify feasible improvements to be eventually implemented in the future. The second and mainly part of this work concern on the secondary raw material features. Mechanical properties of different recycled polyolefin mixtures have been evaluated through mechanical and thermal test.