Research & Development

When it comes to product innovation, development, or process refinement and improvement, the role of the R&D department is crucial. 

The R&D department of Polyeco S.A. aims to keep the company’s competitive edge, achieve future growth, and maintain relevance in the chosen market.

 

Research is formalized curiosity that can generate new knowledge; thus, our R&D team, comprised of environmental scientists, engineers etc., conducts research into the industry’s newest trends. This research helps the department develop and maintain its current products. Existing products are evaluated and modified or updated when required. The team contributes to the company’s future direction through innovation and controlled development.

 

In practice, our R&D department focuses on seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought of. We are constantly investing in research and development and striving to improve our processes. We manifest our commitment to sustainable development and environmental improvement by implementing research programs in collaboration with a network of institutions, universities, and organizations.

 

Some of our Research programs are listed below:

 

  • REMPLASMA
  • PHOTOREC
  • OZOREMSOIL

For Polyeco there is no research

without action and no action without research!

PHOTOREC

End-of-life photovoltaic (EOL-PV) panel management is an important issue that is expected to become a major issue in the years ahead.  The PHOTOREC project focuses on the management of EOL-PV in the context of a circular economy.

PVs are installed in a decentralized manner and the existence of hazardous components, as well as significant amounts of valuable materials and crucial elements, makes end-of-life valorization critical.

As a result, planning appropriate management practices for PV waste is a high priority for their timely and successful implementation, with a positive outlook for society and the market. The project entails designing a mobile dismantling unit for EOL-PVs, implementing and establishing a prototype for material/metal recovery at lab scale, and assessing the life cycle of various alternatives.

OZOREMSOIL

Representative samples of soil contaminated with various organic pollutants, as well as oil-drilling cuttings (drilling muds), will be selected and their properties determined.

At the same time, the advanced oxidation of polluted soil and drilling cuttings will be studied at lab-scale by injecting an ozone-enriched gas or an ozone-diluted aqueous phase through a soil column. Under semi-batch conditions, a laboratory soil ozonation device will be designed and developed, and a systematic parametric analysis of the performance of the advanced oxidation process via ozone delivery will be conducted. To estimate the kinetic parameters of reactive processes, a numerical model will be developed to describe multiphase flow, mass transfer, and oxidation processes in porous media (soil).

The lab-scale tests will serve as the foundation for defining the design parameters for a mobile pilot unit with an “in-situ” processing capacity of 500 kg / cycle of polluted soil treatment.

Following that, semi-industrial scale tests on contaminated soil and oil-drilling cuttings will be conducted to optimize the system performance in terms of efficient soil decontamination under realistic conditions. Finally, a feasibility study of a large scale unit with an estimated capacity of 20 t/h will be carried out, as will an assessment of the technology’s environmental impact and a benchmarking of ozonation against other competitive technologies.

REMPLASMA

The goal of the project is developing a semi-continuous or continuous soil feed system that will remove organic pollutants from heavily polluted soil using cold plasma’s advanced oxidation processes.

Recent studies with synthetic pollutants in batch reactors have revealed that the main advantages of cold plasma technology

over conventional ones used on a large scale for ex-situ soil remediation (e.g. incineration, bioremediation) are: low energy cost, prompt oxidation of pollutants, and a weak environmental footprint.

Batch reactor tests for different soil types contaminated by different organic pollutant mixtures will be conducted to optimize the operational parameters of the cold plasma under real and variable conditions.

The test results will be used to develop a semi-continuous or continuous-feed cold plasma reactor (or a reactor array) with a soil recovery capacity of 10-20 kg/hour.

The performance of this laboratory-scale prototype device will be evaluated in terms of its effectiveness in removing real contaminants from actual soil, while its operations will be fully automated. Finally, the cost of installing and operating a large-scale pilot unit will be estimated, and a cost-benefit analysis will be performed to determine the unit’s long-term viability.