Agilyx, GE partner to recycle plastics

Agilyx, headquartered in Tigard, Oregon, has announced plans to work with General Electric Co. (GE), headquartered in Boston, to increase the amount of postuse plastic scrap that’s turned into valuable feedstocks. Agilyx plans to use GE’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help with chemical recycling of this material. By using this technology, the two companies hope to increase chemical recycling of postuse plastics from the current 10 percent to 95 percent, Agilyx reports in a news release on the partnership.

Agilyx assessed GE’s advanced modeling technology that was developed by GE Research to determine whether it would be applicable to the database of chemical conversions of postuse plastics at Agilyx. According to Agilyx, both companies have determined that deploying AI technologies—including machine learning, predictive modeling and optimization tools—can help to “greatly improve recycling rates.” 

Todd Alhart, executive of media relations and chief technology storyteller at GE Global Research, says the core of GE’s AI technology is its Digital Twin technology, which is digital modeling of physical assets, processes and systems that enable data to be collected, analyzed and acted upon to optimize and drive better business outcomes.

“What we will be doing with Agilyx is integrating their extensive industry domain knowledge, data and other relevant expertise related to their chemical recycling processes and building Digital Twins of these processes that can learn, analyze and draw new insights from this data to deliver new and better processes to improve recycling rates and yields,” Alhart says.

Joe Vaillancourt, Agilyx CEO, says the company is already using its own predictive modeling capabilities for supplying its current customers with plastic feedstocks. He says GE will be providing automation, optimization and learning algorithms that will accelerate and optimize feedstock recipes. He says, "We are already working with some customers in beta projects and expect a commercial launch sometime early next year."

The AI technology will be used in combination with other supply chain innovations in partnership with a growing number of diverse leaders in the waste and recycling, petrochemical, consumer goods products and retail industries, according to Agilyx.

“The main challenge to scaling solutions is effectively managing the variability and complexity of the materials and contaminants within diverse waste streams,” Vaillancourt says. “The Agilyx team developed deep domain expertise and built the industry’s largest database of chemical recycling characterizations analyzing the relationship between thousands of plastic waste sources, processing parameters and end products. By leveraging GE’s expertise in AI, [machine learning] and [predictive modeling], we are deploying a tool for global use. 

“Consumers can utilize plastic as a valuable renewable resource creating a true circular economy for plastics—a material that we all have come to depend on in our daily lives,” he concludes.

Vaillancourt adds that Agilyx and GE have not partnered on projects before. He says some executives at each company "have done some prior work [that] bridged the relationship" but he notes that the joint development assessment the companies completed solidified their "collective enthusiasm and common vision."

“Agilyx is focused on diverting all plastics from landfill and finding their best end use,” Vaillancourt adds. “Not all post use plastics are suitable feedstocks for all type of virgin plastics or fuels. As a result, it is very complicated to take the many thousands of different waste plastic streams and manage them to their best use without incurring significant costs. As a result, Agilyx has a priority of chemical recycling manufacturing, we will chemically recycle discrete polymers back to virgin plastic as our highest priority, second we can take a variety of mixed plastics and produce a naphtha that then can be used as base feedstock to plastic manufacturing and last there are many mixed plastic streams that are not appropriate for plastic manufacturing but that we use to make a variety of low-carbon and low-sulfur fuels.”

Agilyx focuses on chemical recycling difficult-to-recycle postuse plastic streams into high-value, low-carbon circular feedstocks and fuels. The company has a system capable of recycling polystyrene (PS) into styrene monomer to make new PS products.