PureCycle says flagship site showing improved reliability, product quality

After severe storms across the Midwest extended a scheduled operational pause, PureCycle Technologies’ polypropylene (PP) purification facility in Ironton, Ohio, officially has resumed operations, and the Orlando, Florida-based recycler reports the site is “demonstrating improved reliability and product quality” since coming back online.

The company began a scheduled pause in Ironton on April 1 to make several improvements to the facility with the goal of increasing reliability and driving more consistent product quality, and initially said the pause would last two to four weeks.

Operations resumed in Ironton the week of May 20, but severe storms across the Midwest caused an areawide power outage May 22 that impacted the site.

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Prior to the outage, the company began with feed rates of 2,500 pounds per hour and says it reached rates of 5,500 pounds per hour leading up to the storm.

Operations then resumed May 30 after equipment repairs were completed. The company restarted with feed rates at around 2,500 pounds per hour and says it subsequently has reached rates of up to 6,000 pounds per hour.

According to PureCycle, the Ironton facility has produced approximately 265,000 pounds of recycled PP pellets since resuming operations May 30.

“We spent April and early May making more than 100 improvements to the facility and, despite the unforeseen circumstances with the power outage, it’s been great to see the positive early results,” PureCycle CEO Duston Olson says. “There is still more work to do, but we have made significant progress and I’m both confident and excited about the future of our flagship facility.”

The company’s operations involve two aspects: prep and purification.

Recovered PP is preprocessed via conventional grinding, incoming bales are broken and the PP is washed is reduced in size before going through PureCycle’s advanced recycling process.

The company says its near-term operational focus in Ironton is to maximize facility uptime but notes its team will continue to increase rates in the future. The facility was restarted with a feedstock low in co-product two—lower concentrations of polyethylene and ash. Feedstocks with higher percentages of co-product two will reportedly be introduced in the near future to determine the impact of the upgrades to the co-product two system.

PureCycle says it will provide additional updates prior to the end of its second quarter.