The University of Birmingham, Stopford receive plastics recycling technology funding

A research consortium comprising technologists from the University of Birmingham and engineering firm Stopford has been awarded 300,000 British pounds sterling ($370,290) in funding from government organization Innovate U.K. to develop a novel plastic recycling technology.

The technology is a chemical recycling process that uses hot compressed water as a green solvent to selectively depolymerize end-of-life plastics into commodity compounds that can be processed to produce virgin materials. This supplants fossil fuel feedstocks and injects circularity in plastic material management, the consortium says. The process can recycle contaminated and degraded plastics and requires reduced downstream processing.

RELATED: Supercritical solution

The process exploits the unique behavior of water in its supercritical state, where it exhibits reduced polarity and high solvating power for complex polymers, according to the consortium. Under combined intermediate heat and high pressure, it decomposes polymers at ‘selective spots,’ producing target products at high proportions.

The new tranche of funding was awarded by the U.K. Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge to adapt the platform technology to polyethylene terephthalate- (PET-) based plastic material including pots, salad trays and tubs. It complements the team’s ongoing work, also funded by Innovate U.K., to establish a demonstrator facility at Birmingham’s Tyseley Energy Park. The facility will recycle polyolefin-based plastics, such as polyethylene and polypropylene, used in packaging.

“I am delighted that our technology has once again been recognized by UKRI’s SSPP Challenge as a ground-breaking recycling technology for the management of waste plastics,” says Ben Herbert, technology and innovation director at Stopford. “I look forward to working with our project partners to expand its application to enable a circular approach to the management of PET-based plastics waste.”

Early last year, the University of Birmingham licensed the rights to its “supercritical water” technology to Stopford to develop a process for recycling mixed plastic packaging that delivers a greater proportion of high-value recycled plastic with less emissions, fewer processing steps than current recycling methods and no solvent residues.

The partners originally were awarded funding from the UKRI SSPP Challenge to enable further development of its process, which Bushra Al-Duri, Ph.D., from the University of Birmingham School of Chemical Engineering, first developed before it was further developed during a collaborative project with Stopford.