53 kg of Nylon and 120 kg Polyolefins monofilaments were produced from discarded nets and ropes collected in the Basque fishing ports. These monofilaments are currently being processed by ITSASKORDA and soon they will be converted into mussel long-line ropes! More news soon!

The whole process has been long, but results seem promising. The recovered nets from Basque fishing ports were cleaned, washed, cut, crushed, separated by density, dried, and extruded before pelletising. From different combination of compounding, two were selected. The recyclability of the recycled compounded pellets for textile applications were evaluated by GAIKER and NTT.

At lab scale, the pellets were transformed into filaments, and their processability (melt spinning/drawing) and functionality (mechanical properties) were assessed from the different combinations.

And as result, the best compounding was selected for the next steps, which was  the industrial processing of the pellets to spinning them into monofilaments. Resulting monofilaments are shown in the pictures.

Next steps: the manufactu ring of the BLUENET’s PA and polyolefin ropes for ongrowing mussel long line aquaculture production.

Stay tunned!