Chalmers University: all plastic waste could be recycled into new plastic

A research group at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has developed an efficient process for breaking down any plastic waste to a molecular level. The resulting gases can then be transformed back into new plastics – of the same quality as the original. The new process could transform today’s plastic factories into recycling refineries, within the framework of their existing infrastructure.

“Through finding the right temperature – which is around 850 degrees Celsius – and the right heating rate and residence time, we have been able to demonstrate the proposed method at a scale where we turn 200 kg of plastic waste an hour into a useful gas mixture. That can then be recycled at the molecular level to become new plastic materials of virgin quality,” says Henrik Thunman.

The experiments were carried out at the Chalmers Power Central facility in Gothenburg.

Read more at: https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/see/news/Pages/All-plastic-waste-could-be-recycled-into-new-high-quality-plastic.aspx
and at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993719300697

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