Recycling of cliche waste from flexography printing for production of composites with applications for acoustic and thermal insulation

ABSTRACT Flexography is a widely used method in flexible packaging printing, where the cliche is a resilient photopolymerized printing plate. Cliches are difficultly recycled, because they acquire a crosslinked molecular structure. This also generates serious environmental problems in the final discard, as soon as, it has an indeterminate period of decomposition. Companies need grounding the cliches after their lifetime. Currently, there are no products or methods for recycling of this material. Therefore, the aim of this work is the recycle of cliche waste for the production of plates for thermal and acoustic insulation. A method of comminution of the material with suitable particle size was developed. Composites produced with cliche and PET by means of press molding at 350°C, obtained high flexibility and elongation of 22% until rupture. Up to 90% of the cliche can be useful in the compositions studied. Thermal insulation of the composite was 18% lower than of a laminated wood plate with similarly thick. For other hand, acoustic insulation has increased by 30% with the composite plates, especially in the frequency range above 2 kHz, showing to a potential insulation application.