ReLight and “From Light Fixture to Light Fixture—Establishing a Material Cycle for the Upcycling of Post-Consumer PC/PMMA Waste Fractions”
The unique selling point of the project is that, in addition to used light fixtures with known material compositions from the PRACHTS production lines, the recycling system to be established will also take into account used light fixtures from competitors currently on the market.
To address the unknown material behavior during recycling—resulting from the material composition—and the final product properties of the recycled luminaires, the aging behavior is modeled based on experimental studies. In addition, analyses of the pollutant content of the processed material are being conducted to identify potentially hazardous material components, given the stricter legal requirements that have been introduced in recent years.
At the start of the project, the collected input material is identified and sorted based on parameters that are important for the production of lighting fixtures, such as transparency. These individual fractions are then subjected to artificial accelerated aging tests that simulate the repeated mechanical processing during the recycling process and environmental exposure over a typical product lifespan. This data serves as the basis for an aging model that will enable the project partner PRACHT, upon project completion, to determine the suitability for use of the corresponding fraction and the necessary processing effort based on the properties of the input materials.