As part of activities associated with MultiCycle’s April 2022 final dissemination event in Ghent Belgium, a group of visitors from the project’s international consortium of research, industrial and commercialisation partners were able to benefit from an advance visit to Centexbel’s Zwijnaarde Campus facilities.

As a Technology Centre Centexbel targets the chemical intensive polymer processing industry including textiles, plastic converting, coatings, adhesives and others. Key activities, shared between Ghent and two other technical sites in Grâce-Hollogne and Kortrijk, encompass

  • research and development in melt processing of polymers, in coating and surface modification, composites, recycling, smart textiles, textile applications and material characterization,
  • independent product certification, and
  • extensive and advance analysis, characterization and testing of textile and plastics based products and dissemination of knowledge

Within the MultiCycle project Centexbel has been instrumental to the important tasks of characterization of recovered materials as inputs for reprocessing into new products through a battery of rheological, thermal and mechanical measurements, and for melt spinning trials up to multifilament pilot scale with MultiCycle recovered thermoplastics, facilitating onward utilization of staple fibres in high performance non-wovens and composites.

HEAR MORE about the evaluation of MultiCycle thermoplastics in automotive fibre reinforced composite structures by WATCHING AGAIN the online dissemination event “Shifting towards Circular Economics in Thermoplastics Composites”.

Our thanks to colleagues at Centexbel for hosting this fascinating visit and especially Isabel De Schrijver for leading the site tour.