INEOS Styrosolutions process to bring polystyrene advanced recycling to a commercial scale with the help of partners to achieve a circular-economy-driven future in a more sustainable way. It will like taking leftover food and recover the main ingredients in its pure form, then make the same or another product from the recycled ingredients, and repeat the process over for all needs to a circular economy. Innovative engineers are now working on a technology that enables the scenario, except for plastics, called advanced recycling.
Advanced recycling starts with depolymerizes polymer chains, breaking them down into the chemical parts then separating them to recover the target material, monomers, as the plastic’s chemical building material. The precise, efficient process will rebirthing the pure substance with purity comparable to original raw material. Until now, the engineer found the best suited plastic to undergo advanced recycling is polystyrene, the one often used both for durable and single use, sometimes pointed out as a recycle-challenging polymer. As polystyrene nature of low ceiling temperature and simplistic polymer chain structure enables the high recovery rates to the material and low recycling energy, making it an extremely suitable target for the innovation. Styrene monomers also can be recovered through advanced recycling. These raw materials are used in a wide variety of styrenic specialized polymers, usually in extreme durable products such as electronics, household appliances and automotive.
The company is currently aiming to bring the technologies to a commercial scale, and developing partnerships in advanced recycling. This project’s early-stage engineering began in 2019. The project facility is planned to be built at the company’s location in Channahon, IL. These plants propose to utilize advanced recycling technology that has been developed by their partner, Agilyx Technologies, a company based in Portland, OR. The demonstration case using 100% recycled polystyrene was produced in late 2019 to produce yoghurt cups by their partner based in Fischach, Germany, Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller. The styrene monomers from the advanced recycling partners are made then polymerized into recycled polystyrene plastic material. Then all the plastics were thermoformed and extruded into yoghurt cups. Moreover, all recycled polystyrene is also approved to be used in both medical and food sectors, in reason of the materials purity even though it derives from the recycling process. This means the advanced recycling process is enabled to recycle products in a closed loop. These advancements are seen as the bud of a future circular polystyrene economy. If the demonstration provide quality polystyrene products and executable on a commercial scale, confidently the demand for recycled and waste polystyrene will continue to grow.
