Development of railway sleepers using plastic waste

This project aimed to present a technical application to reduce the amount of plastic waste, giving new life to mixed plastics normally destined for landfill and incineration.

The project was developed at PIEP, with the support of Extruplás, a Portuguese waste treatment company, and CVR – Center for Waste Recovery.

PIEP worked on obtaining material with high mechanical properties from composites with mixed plastics. The investigation consisted in the formation of materials with high mechanical resistance from co-continuous mixtures of incompatible plastics, coming from the mixed plastics line, with and without reinforcement materials (glass fibers), and in the characterization of the developed materials.