1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the recycle of mixed scrap plastics and more particularly relates to the production of useful articles from mixed scrap plastics.
2. Discussion of Related Art
The use of plastics has grown substantially in recent years and projected usage rates of plastics are expected to be even higher in the future as plastics find new uses and further replace conventional materials such as metals and glass. This increased plastic usage has resulted in a corresponding increased generation of plastic scrap from a variety of sources. Some of the plastic scrap has been reusable, for example, relatively pure polyester scrap from return deposit beverage containers has found some utility as a source for low grade, off-color, polyester, but most plastic scrap, for example, automotive scrap and household scrap, is mixed scrap plastic which has found little commercial utility and as a result has typically been disposed of as trash in landfills. Conventional wisdom has seen these mixed scrap plastics as essentially unusable as a raw material for the production of useful resinous articles because the mixed nature of the scrap plastics provides, upon melting of the scrap, immiscible blends which have little structural integrity, poor impact strengthes and poor flexural strengthes. These immiscible blends exhibit extensive phase separation and delamination during extrusion processing and would likely experience extensive decomposition if maintained at extrusion temperatures at typical extrusion conditions. Until the present invention, scrap plastics comprising mixed immiscible scrap plastics were seen by those in the art as having little utility in the production of useful resinous articles.
An object of the present invention is to produce useful articles from scrap plastics comprising mixed immiscible plastics.