POLYURETHANES | INNOVATIONS
Polyurethane recycling
looks for chemical boost Could chemical recycling help polyurethane materials become circular? Peter Mapleston explores the multiple projects trying to find technical answers to unlock the recycling potential of PU
Recycling of polyurethane foams is moving up a gear. Or to extend the motoring metaphor a little further, a new powertrain is being added – chemi- cal recycling. Mechanical recycling within production opera- tions is often a necessity, especially when working with flexible foam blocks, given how much edge trim can be created. That foam is most usually broken up into small pieces, rebonded, and reused in products such as carpet underlay, gym mats, and acoustic insulation. As long ago as 2005, ISOPA, the European Diisocyanate and Polyol Producers Association, published what it said was a non-comprehensive list of companies involved in polyurethane recy- cling; there were 50 companies on the list, the large majority working with industrial scrap, although even then, eight were connected with
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
some form of post-consumer recycling. One company, Agglorex in Belgium, this year celebrates 50 years of recycling flexible foams. Post-consumer waste recycling, mostly of
mattresses, has been going on for well over a decade at a certain modest level, but now it looks like chemical recycling could provide an alternative solution to the problem of where to put all that voluminous material. Polyurethane, mostly in the form of a foam, rigid
or flexible, is used in diverse products that include shoe soles, furniture cushioning, all sorts of thermal and acoustic insulation, and giant wind turbine blades. Annual consumption is around 18m tonnes. At the end of its first useful life, most of it is landfilled, presenting even more problems than solid plastics because of its volume (even if it can be compressed). One major polyurethanes
January/February 2021 | PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD 27
Main image: Annual global consumption of polyurethane is around 18m tonnes, mainly in foam form
IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK
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