Only a fraction of the material that could be turned into new plastic is currently recycled. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now demonstrated how the carbon atoms in mixed waste can replace all fossil raw materials in the production of new plastic.
This is according to a research team from
As detailed in the journal
“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 kilograms 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,” Henrik Thunman, an energy professor at
Chalmers, said.
This is because their recycling process follows the same method used to make brand new plastics, which involves cracking fossil oil and gas fractions inside petrochemical plants and then recombining them in different configurations. Their process does not follow the standard plastics recycling model, which is based on a concept known in the industry as “waste hierarchy.”