Enabling more Recycled Content

Incorporating recycled polypropylene (rPP) into product manufacturing helps customers and consumers meet sustainability goals. However, in many cases, rPP is an unreliable component due to variation from batch to batch and frequent contamination. Milliken’s DeltaMax™ Performance Modifier improves rPP quality, increasing melt-flow rate and improving impact resistance. Integrating DeltaMax helped Infiltrator Water Technologies increase the amount of rPP used in manufacturing without compromising product quality. Infiltrator found traditional additives were not meeting their business’ sustainability needs. By incorporating DeltaMax™, Infiltrator has realized a three-fold melt-flow rate increase, while maintaining impact. This has enabled Infiltrator to open up its recycled material streams, reduce brittle failures by roughly 90%, increase the percentage of rPP in its septic chambers to more than 80%, and obtain a greater yield from each bale of recycled content.

“As a company focused on sustainability, we have always used recycled materials,” said Dave Smith, purchasing manager, Infiltrator. “But when we faced new issues with recycled PP, including lack of post-industrial content and greater lot-to-lot variation in post-consumer content, we found traditional additives were not up to the challenge. Based on previous collaborations with Milliken, we tried the DeltaMax technology and achieved impressive results. This performance modifier allows us to purchase a broader range of recycled PP, increase the yield from each load of material and deliver a better product to our customers.”

“Many converters and manufacturers are turning to recycled plastic as part of their environmental initiatives,” said Allan Randall, global product line manager, Milliken & Company. “However, this process comes with complex variables, with the lack of post-industrial recyclate and greater lot-to-lot variation in post-consumer recyclate leading to inconsistent physical properties in final parts. This is where our DeltaMax technology, which was developed specifically for enabling melt-flow and impact improvements in virgin and recycled polypropylene, is allowing Infiltrator to expand its sustainability efforts by enabling larger yield from each bale of recycled content while ensuring excellence in production and in the field.”

Smith noted, “Our manufacturing team has high confidence in DeltaMax based on the excellent results we are seeing. Equally important, our customers are pleased with the increased durability of our septic chambers, even under temperature extremes and other harsh field conditions. Thanks to our collaboration with Milliken, we are achieving our processing and performance goals for recycled PP while strengthening Infiltrator’s sustainability posture.” Currently, Infiltrator is working with Milliken to investigate other high-performance additives with the potential of increasing dimensional stability of the Quick4 septic chambers.

Allan Randall, Global Product Line Manager, Milliken & Company