On 8th and 9th June 2023 it was held, in person, the M25 General Assembly of CISUFLO, hosted by AQUAFIL  SpA in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

On the first day, the CISUFLO consortium presented all WPs; on the second day, the consortium had the chance to visit AQUAFIL SpA facilities.

M25 General Assembly of CISUFLO represented the perfect occasion for the partners to present achievements in the project, share updates and discuss the future project’s activities.

An update of the CISUFLO pilots related to M25 is given below:

Pilot 1 – Manufacturing of Circular Floor Covering: The powder casting trials for carpets were presented. For the bioflooring, tests with 10% PVC filler in flexible flooring were completed and successful, test with 30% recycled wood pulp in flooring tiles are ongoing. The defibering of the laminates works well, it is only difficult to remove small coating particles (10% is rejected when working with laminate flooring).

Pilot 2 – Automated system for identification & sorting of flooring waste: Design and construction of suction control valve, design and construction of air pumps, integration of the conveyor belt inverter, design of electrical boxes and circuits of the main and secondary systems. It should be transferred to CTB in November.

Pilot 3 – PolySep technology for separation: PolySep has arrived and been installed at CTB facility in May 2023. The training is scheduled in June while the first trials in July.

Pilot 4 – Laminate flooring recycling: Small adaptations have been done to the recycling line (upgrade of infeed section). The first testing of the emissions has been carried out (vapour emissions).

Pilot 5 – Vinyl flooring recycling: 3 industrial tests with 5 wt% (10 wt% would be the maximum) pre-consumer recycled content in plastisol have been performed and the quality is fine. The test plan of DEC is presented, the delay is due to the formation of odours coming from the plasticisers (extraction unit ordered).

Pilot 6 – Textile flooring recycling: As an alternative to PolySep, Aquafil is also working on improving the mechanical recycling of tiles and rubber mats.