Beautifully colorful
The coloring of plastics is already a challenge with new materials, since both the process and the plastics and colorants must be optimally matched to each other. With the ever-increasing demands for recycling management, more and more recycled plastics have to be used in products. The Kunststoff-Zentrum therefore offers the course “Quality Assurance in the Coloring of Recycled Plastics” to provide plastics processors with the necessary tools.
Colored extrusion process at SKZ. (Photo: SKZ)
SKZ is dedicating a new course to quality assurance in the coloring of recycled plastics
Coloring new materials is a challenge for plastics processors: the process, plastics and colorants must be optimally matched to each other. When coloring recycled plastics, the demands on the coloring are by no means reduced – on the contrary: here, new difficulties arise when adjusting the color. “With secondary plastics, there are strong color fluctuations and the material purity also varies greatly – this is what makes coloring so complex,” says Dr. Linda Mittelberg, Head of Quality and Life Cycle Group Managers Spectroscopy at SKZ. “There are numerous metrological and rule-based approaches for improved quality assurance of the color of recycled plastics – and it is precisely these that we want to highlight in the course, incorporating the latest research results,” adds Christoph Kreutz, Group Leader Training Center Quality Control at SKZ.
Demonstration of measuring systems for color prediction
The new SKZ course “Quality Assurance in the Coloring of Recycled Plastics” covers a wide range of topics and also deals with other topics such as sorting of plastics in terms of material purity and color purity, problems of sorting black plastics, colorants for the circular economy, as well as ecological considerations of the circular economy. As is well known from SKZ training courses, the practical part is not neglected either: for example, demonstrations of measuring systems for color prediction, color measurement, material identification and automatic color control are on the agenda.
The one-day course is aimed at processors of recycled plastics and quality assurance staff and will take place on November 18, 2024 and April 3, 2025.
