Recycling

Early plastics recycling succeeded with clean, single-resin streams but struggled with contamination, weak markets, and systems not designed for scale.

Heterogeneous thermal catalytic pathways for upcycling polyolefins offer a promising approach towards chemical circularity.

Medical plastics recovery depends on product architecture, contamination control, resin choice, and end-of-life design strategy.

Upcycled nitrile and SBS rubbers can become solid polyamine sorbents for CO₂ capture and rubber waste recovery.

BTX aromatics provide key building blocks for resins, polyesters, polyamides, and high-performance plastics.

Melt filtration affects ABS recyclate quality, pressure stability, contaminant removal, melt flow, and the risk of polymer degradation.

In a project with Audi AG, Fraunhofer IVV demonstrated how solvent-based recycling can recover high-quality PC/ABS from automotive waste.

Gasification of automotive shredder plastic with biomass lowers CO₂ emissions and creates circular feedstock for chemical production.

Recycled plastics can expand in building products only when circularity meets the same requirements that govern conventional construction materials.

Regulation is reshaping plastics investment by compressing decision cycles, raising compliance costs, and redirecting capital across the value chain.

Engineers eliminate calcination emissions by encapsulating waste inside cross-linked polymers, creating load-bearing, modular blocks for rapid deployment.

The future of advanced recycling may depend as much on regulatory classification as on reactor design.