ResolVe was granted a funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to explore the recycling of polystyrene. The project proves the feasibility of post-consumer waste becoming a valuable feedstock, thus creating a circular economy for polystyrene. The project also included a commercial and an ecological evaluation of the recycling process. The final report on the ResolVe research is now completed by the team, coordinated by Franziska Nosić, Ineos Styrolution.
The report concludes that depolymerisation – an enhanced process breaking polystyrene up into its building blocks – is a very appropriate recycling solution for polystyrene in combination with distillation of the output for further polymerisation. The process promises to produce recycled polystyrene meeting food contact standards. The research has shown that up to 75 percent of the output can be fed into the purification step and subsequently back into the production of new polystyrene.
The depolymerisation process not only contributes to the reduction of post-consumer waste and the recovery of valuable resources, a life cycle assessment of the production process for polystyrene revealed that the production with previously depolymerised material requires less energy and produces less CO2 than conventionally produced polystyrene.
Source: Recycling Magazine
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