Reading Guide
What is EVA film?
Plastic EVA Film
EVA film is a material made from ethylene and vinyl acetate copolymer, possessing flexibility, transparency, and weather resistance.
It belongs to the plastics category and is a non-toxic, odorless thermoplastic.
Applications
EVA Film Use
The properties of this film allow it to be widely used in multiple fields. For example, in the medical and agricultural fields, it is used due to its environmentally friendly and safe characteristics; in the new energy field, particularly in solar photovoltaic modules, EVA film is used as a packaging material to protect the solar cells and enhance durability.
In addition, it is also used in packaging, footwear, automotive, aerospace, and other industries.
EVA Recycling and Regeneration: A Green Journey to Give Materials a New Life
Environmentally Friendly Recycling of EVA Film
Recycling and regenerating EVA materials not only reduces environmental pollution but also transforms waste into resources, promoting the development of a circular economy. From collection to regeneration and granulation, every step contributes to achieving a green future.
In daily life and industrial production, EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer) materials are widely used in footwear, packaging materials, sports equipment, and solar cell encapsulation due to their excellent flexibility, impact resistance, and resistance to environmental stress cracking. However, with the extensive use and disposal of EVA products, effectively recycling and regenerating these materials to reduce environmental pollution and achieve resource recycling has become an important issue in the current environmental protection field.
The Significance of EVA Recycling and Regeneration
Recycling and Regeneration of Environmentally Friendly Films
EVA materials are difficult to degrade in the natural environment. If discarded indiscriminately, they will not only cause resource waste but also potentially lead to long-term pollution of soil and water sources. Through recycling and regeneration technology, discarded EVA products can be reprocessed into usable materials, thereby reducing reliance on virgin resources, lowering energy consumption and carbon emissions, and promoting the development of a circular economy.
The EVA Recycling and Regeneration Process
The recycling and regeneration of EVA typically includes steps such as collection, sorting, cleaning, crushing, granulation, and reuse.
First, waste EVA products, such as discarded shoes and packaging materials, need to be collected from various sources. Then, these waste materials are sorted to remove impurities and non-EVA materials. Next, the sorted EVA waste is cleaned to remove surface dirt and grease. The cleaned EVA waste is then fed into a crusher to be broken down into smaller fragments.
The crushed EVA fragments undergo further processing, such as melting, filtering, and granulation, ultimately resulting in recycled EVA granules. These recycled granules can then be used again to produce new EVA products, such as shoe soles and packaging materials, thus achieving resource recycling.
EVA Waste Recycling and Reuse Pathways
Given the environmental pressures associated with EVA, recycling and reuse have become important directions. Existing EVA recycling technologies mainly include mechanical recycling, pyrolysis, and chemical recycling.
Mechanical Recycling: Mechanical recycling involves physically processing waste EVA through crushing, cleaning, and drying, followed by re-extrusion and granulation to form recycled granules for non-high-end applications. Mechanical recycling is simple and low-cost, but the physical properties of the recycled granules, due to the presence of vinyl acetate monomers, are degraded, limiting their application scope.
Pyrolysis: Pyrolysis involves decomposing EVA waste at high temperatures, breaking down its macromolecular structure to produce fuel oil and other chemicals. This method reduces waste volume and generates usable energy, but requires significant equipment investment, is difficult to control, and carries the risk of harmful gas emissions, requiring strict environmental regulations.
Chemical Recycling: Chemical recycling includes technologies such as catalytic cracking, hydrolysis, and depolymerization, chemically decomposing the EVA structure to convert the polymer into monomers or oligomers. This method yields high-purity recycled materials, facilitating the recovery of raw materials, but the process is complex, difficult to scale up, and relatively expensive.
Currently, there are two main technical approaches for EVA recycling:
Physical recycling method: This involves processing discarded EVA products (such as shoe materials, packaging films, and photovoltaic encapsulant films) through steps such as cleaning, crushing, and melt extrusion to produce recycled granules. For example, waste EVA encapsulant film from the photovoltaic industry, after defluorination treatment, can be reused in low-demand applications, with a recycling rate of over 90%. This method has low costs (approximately 2000-5000 yuan/ton), but the performance of the recycled material decreases by 15%-30%, requiring blending with virgin material.
Chemical recycling method: This involves decomposing EVA into monomers such as ethylene and acetic acid through high-temperature pyrolysis, and then repolymerizing them. This method can achieve 100% material closed-loop recycling, but the equipment investment is high (a single set of equipment costs over ten million yuan), and it is currently only being piloted in high-end fields (such as medical-grade EVA).
EVA Film Plastic Crusher Recycling
The TLV series crusher are widely used in various plastic products.Such As: PP,PE,film material and sheet,PET bottle.
Tyrone will further strengthen communication and cooperation with customers, continuously improve product quality and service levels, actively expand domestic and international markets, and make greater contributions to promoting the crushing and recycling industry and including the environment.
Technical Challenges and Solutions in EVA Recycling and Regeneration
EVA Film Recycling Reduces Environmental Pollution
Although EVA recycling and regeneration offer numerous advantages, they also face several technical challenges in practice. For example, discarded EVA products may contain various additives and contaminants, which can affect the performance of the recycled material during the regeneration process.
To address these issues, researchers are continuously developing new recycling and regeneration technologies. These include using advanced separation techniques to remove impurities from waste EVA; optimizing the performance of recycled materials by adjusting regeneration process parameters; and developing new recycling additives to improve the stability and durability of the recycled material.
