UK: Circular Economy Ineos Styrolution to Develop Europe’s First Polystyrene Advanced Recycling Pilot Facility

From Ahlam Rais

Ineos Styrolution has decided to go ahead and invest in Europe’s first polystyrene advanced recycling pilot plant in Swindon, UK. Partnering with Recycling Technologies, the company is all set to establish the project by 2022 which will be based on Recycling Technologies’ fluidised bed reactor technology.

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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.
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.
(Source: Pixabay)

Frankfurt/Germany – Ineos Styrolution has recently confirmed its decision to invest into 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 recently announced decision is a significant step forward of launching polystyrene recycling through the 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.

Harnessing our fluidised bed engineering technology and expertise to recycling polystyrene is a critical step to making polystyrene circular.

Adrian Griffiths, CEO & Founder of Recycling Technologies

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 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.”

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