About us
Introduction
The Circular Plastics team of prof. Kim Ragaert brings together researchers from the fields of mechanical engineering, chemistry and materials science, all of them combining their specific knowledge in a multidisciplinary effort to achieve their ambitious mission of helping realize a circular economy for plastics.The team aims to transfer fundamental polymer science to the improved and increased mechanical recycling of plastics.
Working from the structure-property-processing relationships in thermoplastics, we work on the modeling of Recycling Quality (RQ), resource efficiency of recycled plastics, design for recyclability, the properties and upgrading of (contaminated) blends. Our main fields of application include packaging, WEEE and consumer goods.
Group leader Kim Ragaert is an associate professor at Ghent University and the academic chair of the Plastics to Resource pipeline within CAPTURE . She has been nominated for the Plastics Ambassador 2020 Award by Plastics Recyclers Europe.
Synergies with academia and industry
We work in close cooperation with other research groups and we are part of several research clusters.
CAPTURE is an interdisciplinary collaboration between several young and dynamic professors from 3 different faculties from Ghent University, aiming to accelerate radical technological innovations in the field of sustainable resource recovery by multidisciplinary collaboration between stakeholders, with a clear focus on valorization.
As an umbrella organization, CSC wants to respond to the implementation of SusChem as the European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry at the European level and the implementation of the innovation cluster policy at the Flemish level.