Discarded Coffee Capsules, Perfect Recycling Technology Developed

Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources

Four types of Augusto capsule coffee.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] A technology has been developed to recycle coffee capsules made of plastic that are currently discarded as general waste because they cannot be recycled.

The Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) announced on the 26th that a research team led by Dr. Jeon Ho-seok from the Resource Utilization Research Division succeeded in developing a recycling technology for 'waste coffee capsules,' a type of household waste that has recently surged as plastic waste.

The research team focused on used capsule coffee, which is classified as general waste, and conducted a study on separating the materials of a mixture of plastic and coffee grounds. As a result, they recovered 98.3% of the plastic from waste coffee capsules, which can cause environmental pollution as well as waste problems.

About 272 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide each year, but only 9% is recycled. Through this technology development, plastics that are difficult to sort and wash and have low recycling rates, especially coffee capsules widely used and discarded everywhere, can now be reused as recycled plastic.

The research team crushed and washed waste coffee capsules composed of 97.3% plastic and 2.7% aluminum to remove coffee grounds. After secondary crushing to a size of 10mm, they used corona discharge electrostatic separation to classify conductive aluminum and non-conductive plastic, successfully removing 95.4% of aluminum and recovering 98.3% of plastic. Corona Discharge Electrostatic separation is a method that uses the electrical properties of particles. It is a technology that can separate materials by utilizing the DC high voltage of the cathode supplied to the corona electrode, ion bombardment, differences in particle charge decay rates, and image force.

To evaluate the recyclability of the recovered waste plastic, the research team manufactured samples into pellets and analyzed their physical properties. The results showed no harmful substances detected, and the properties were similar to homo polypropylene, which is currently used in general household products, indicating that it can be used as recycled polypropylene.

Due to technical difficulties in separating mixed types of waste plastics, recycling them into recycled plastic has been challenging. Through this study, by efficiently removing aluminum from coffee capsules mostly made of polypropylene (PP), it is expected that recycled plastic can be applied to various products in the future.

Dr. Jeon said, "I hope this research will serve as an opportunity to shift positive perceptions toward eco-friendly resource recycling by reducing waste and preventing environmental pollution through recycling capsule coffee, which is closely used in daily life."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.