MOSCOW (MRC) -- INEOS Styrolution, the global leader in styrenics, has today confirmed its decision to invest into a pilot plant for advanced recycling of polystyrene, said the company.
The site will be set up in collaboration with Recycling Technologies in Swindon, UK. It is expected to be operational in the second half of 2022.
The decision announced today is a significant step forward launching polystyrene recycling through depolymerisation technology. Depolymerisation is an advanced recycling technology that converts polystyrene waste feedstock back into its main building block, Styrene which can then be used to manufacture new polystyrene with identical properties to the virgin material. The unique properties of polystyrene allow this efficient monomer recycling process to be harnessed avoiding the need to downcycle polystyrene. An additional benefit of depolymerisation is a significant decrease of greenhouse gas emissions when compared with the production of virgin polystyrene from naphtha.
The Swindon pilot plant will be based on Recycling Technologies’ fluidised bed reactor technology, which offers excellent scalability making it the technology of choice for future even larger recycling plants.
Dr. Alexander Gluck, President EMEA at INEOS Styrolution comments, “I am excited to see this project move ahead. With Recycling Technologies, we have found a partner, who is not only offering a very attractive technology, but who is also sharing our own vision to avoid polystyrene ending up in landfills or being incinerated. We are on the right path to make polystyrene a circular material."
Adrian Griffiths, CEO & Founder of Recycling Technologies Ltd., adds, “We welcome INEOS Styrolution’s decision and are pleased to be a critical element of the team to build Europe’s first advanced chemical polystyrene recycling facility. Harnessing our fluidised bed engineering technology and expertise to recycling polystyrene is a critical step to making polystyrene circular."
As it was written earlier, INEOS Styrolution joined the U.S. Plastics Pact in their support for collaborative, solution-driven initiatives intended to drive significant system change in the design, use, and reuse of plastics. The U.S. Plastic Pact unites cross-sector approaches, setting a national strategy, and creating scalable solutions to create a path forward toward a circular economy for plastics in the United States by 2025.
As per ICIS-MRC Price Report, market participants said a shortage of material remained in the polystyrene (PS) market at the end of the month. Penoplex's December prices still remained under negotiation, the producer plans to announce them to market participants next week. The average spot styrene monomer (SM) prices grew to the range of USD1,550-1,570/tonne.
INEOS Styrolution is a privately owned multinational chemicals company consisting of 15 standalone business units, headquartered in Rolle, Switzerland and with its registered office in Lyndhurst, United Kingdom. It is the fourth largest chemicals company in the world measured by revenues (after BASF, Dow Chemical and LyondellBasell) and the largest privately owned company in the United Kingdom.
MRC