Patent ID: 7696255

Claim:
A process for recycling soluble or dispersible plastics from a waste product containing plastics comprising: i) treating a plastics-containing waste product with an organic solvent to separate the plastics from the waste product as a plastics solution; ii) concentrating said plastics solution to obtain a concentrated plastics solution containing more than 40 wt % of plastics; iii) preconditioning said concentrated plastics solution to a pressure of at least 2 bar using a first pump ( 3 a ) and a heat exchanger ( 3 b ), and a temperature of 1-10° C. below a boiling temperature of the solvent at that pressure; iv) bringing the preconditioned concentrated plastics solution above the critical point of the plastics solution using a high-pressure pump ( 4 ) and a high-pressure heat exchanger ( 5 ); v) spraying the concentrated plastics solution above the critical point into a plastics recovery unit ( 6 ), to recover the plastics through evaporation of the organic solvent; and vi) transferring the evaporated organic solvent to a condensing unit ( 7 ) to recover the organic solvent.