an additional distillation in which highly volatile impurities whose boiling temperatures lie above the boiling temperature of water but below that of u03b5 caprolactam are separated these highly volatile impurities can have been formed e g by thermally caused decomposition of u03b5 caprolactam in process step c depolymerization on the other hand the recovery process according to the invention can be operated in a very energy saving manner when low requirements are made as to the purity of the recovered u03b5 caprolactam when lower purity requirements are made the process according to the invention provides for removing partly processed product from the process already after steps a and d as first and second intermediate product stream respectively the energy consumption in the succeeding processing steps thereby is lowered the recovered product each removed after steps a d and e either can each be supplied to a particular polymerization process with the corresponding quality requirements for the recovered product and hence the economy of the recovery can be optimized by taking account of the required product quality or these three partial product streams or end product streams are combined in the latter case the purity of the product and the energy consumption of the recovery process can be adjusted by the mixing ratio the invention also relates to the use of the intermediate and end product streams obtained in the process according to the invention the first intermediate product stream preferably is used for the production of engineering plastics or carpet yarn the second intermediate product stream preferably is used for the production of carpet yarn pre oriented yarn.