China Tianying Inc. to use Honeywell UpCycle Process Technology

Honeywell, with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, has announced that China Tianying Inc. (CNTY), an international environmental management company headquartered in Hai’an City in the Jiangsu province of China, will apply Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology in the plastics recycling facility it has planned for Jiangsu. The facility will use Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology to convert mixed plastics into recycled polymer feedstock (RPF). This will be the first commercial facility to use Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology in China.

Unlike Honeywell’s earlier announcements about the joint ventures it has formed with Avangard Innovative in the U.S. and Sacyr in Spain that will deploy UpCycle Process Technology, the company is not forming a joint venture with CNTY.

Kevin Quast, global business lead, Honeywell Plastic Circularity Business, tells Recycling Today, “Honeywell UOP’s strength is in licensing new technologies, not in the owning and operating of assets. The primary business model for Honeywell UOP is licensing, engineering and services rather than joint ventures. Given that the UpCycle Process Technology is a new technology that Honeywell UOP is commercializing, Honeywell UOP chose to explore joint venture opportunities with a couple of customers.”

Honeywell UOP will provide CNTY related engineering work and technical services for the project up to its startup and commissioning. The company also will provide technical support services for the plant's operation, optimization, monitoring and maintenance during its lifetime.  

CNTY intends to apply Honeywell UpCycle Process Technology in building more waste plastics recycling plants in the future based on the success of this project, according to a news release issued by Honeywell. The two parties also explore potential collaboration in various fields, including end-of-life plastics pretreatment and pyrolysis equipment manufacturing. 

“Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology not only expands the types of recyclable plastics that help close the loop within the plastics supply chain but also helps minimize consumption of fossil fuels over the course of virgin plastics production, reducing the carbon footprint,” says Vimal Kapur, the Houston-based president and CEO of Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies. “We are glad to collaborate with CNTY on commercializing this innovative technology in China. Its application addresses challenges posed by waste plastics and promotes a circular economy in China and the world, enabling a more sustainable future of plastics industry.”

Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology uses molecular conversion, pyrolysis and contaminants management technology to convert end-of-life plastic back to Honeywell RPF, which is then used to create new plastics. The UpCycle Process Technology expands the types of plastics that can be recycled to include colored, flexible, multilayered packaging and polystyrene. When used in conjunction with other chemical and mechanical recycling processes, along with improvements to collection and sorting, Honeywell says its UpCycle Process Technology has the potential to increase the amount of global plastic waste that can be recycled to 90 percent.