Recycling of RIM Polyurea Elastomers by Thermal Processing

Management of manufacturing scrap and post-consumer scrap from automobiles will increasingly influence both the acceptance of plastics and choice of plastics in the automotive industry. Polyurea elastomers made by reaction injection molding (RIM) offer many processing, property and cost advantages desired by the automotive industry but their crosslinked nature has generally implied that the scrap cannot be recycled by a widely used recycling method, thermal processing. Recently introduced ICI Polyurethanes imine-polyurea materials for automotive exterior applications can be thermally processed using extruders into sheets, profiles, tubes, moldings etc. The extruded materials have good mechanical integrity and many end-use applications are possible.