Swindon's Recycling Technologies to build pilot polystyrene plant with INEOS Styrolution

By Nicky Godding

25 November 2021

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INEOS Styrolution, the global leader in styrenics (for those of us who don't know, Polystyrene is the main polymer in the styrene category), is to invest in a pilot plant for advanced recycling of polystyrene. 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 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 Glück, President EMEA at INEOS Styrolution, said: “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 added: “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.”

Recycling Technologies Ltd is on a mission to accelerate the evolution of plastic into a more sustainable material. Currently, 88% of the plastic used in the world is either buried, burned or leaked into the environment¹. This means that the world recycles only 12% of the plastic waste produced each year. Recycling Technologies, a research, engineering, and manufacturing company, has developed innovative technologies to turn hard-to-recycle plastic waste including polystyrene and flexible packaging into feedstocks for new plastic production. Our first commercial product, the RT7000, is modular and small-scale, designed to fit easily onto existing waste treatment and recycling sites, providing a scalable solution to recycle waste plastic anywhere in the world.

https://www.businessinnovationmag.co.uk/swindon-based-recycling-technologies-to-launch-on-london-stock-exchanges-aim/

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.