PureCycle Ironton plant up and running

Florida-based PureCycle Technologies Inc. has resumed pellet production at its flagship purification facility in Ironton, Ohio, following maintenance procedures.

PureCycle, which has sought capital and forged alliances to bring its polypropylene (PP) plastic recycling technology to global markets, has acknowledged challenges in its journey to establish its first facility in Ohio.

The company currently is the defendant in a class action lawsuit ostensibly filed on behalf of investors pertaining to an earlier outage at its Ironton plant. One of the law firms involved claims PureCycle failed to disclose material adverse facts about the company’s business, operations and prospects after the Ironton facility experienced a power outage in August.

“One of the most important improvements was the installation of an automatic screen changer on the final product extruder," PureCycle says of the scheduled downtime this fall. "The screen changer will help improve run times and enhance the production of PureCycle’s PureFive Ultra-Pure Recycled (UPR) resin.”

The company says over Thanksgiving weekend that the Ironton maintenance outage was completed and the restart process was initiated, including maintenance activities to recharge the solvent and restart the plant.

“Feedstock was delivered on Sunday, and pellet production resumed on Monday,” the company says. “The restart took a few days longer than expected, due predominantly to delayed electrical component deliveries.”

At full capacity, PureCycle expects its Ironton facility to produce 107 million pounds (53,500 tons) of PP resin per year.

“First off, I want to thank our incredible, hard-working team in Ironton," PureCycle CEO Dustin Olson says. "Many of them worked through the Thanksgiving holiday to install new equipment that will improve the overall operational efficiency of the plant.

“We’ve made many upgrades to the facility that are expected to help us run continuously and meet upcoming milestones. I look forward to sharing our progress in the coming days as we ramp up production in Ironton and bring this first-of-its-kind technology to market.”

Last month, PureCycle sent a commercial shipment of its UPR resin to Milliken & Co., a South Carolina-based materials and chemicals company it says has expertise in polymer additive and colorant technology.

“This delivery of UPR resin will allow Milliken to trial the industry’s first fully sustainable concentrate for polypropylene," PureCycle says.