The team from the University of Birmingham used water under incredibly high pressure and temperature called ‘supercritical’, where its properties and operational behaviour are completely different from ambient/hot water.
Supercritical water can be a solvent for all organic materials including plastics. Its gas-like penetration power makes it a superior medium to decompose mixtures of complex waste plastics into value-added materials, which are feedstock for manufacturing new plastics.
The team wants to further develop the process, dubbed CircuPlast, to improve the conversion of non-recyclable end-of-life plastics into high-value chemicals for use as feedstock for the plastics industry.
The process has been licensed to engineering consultants Stopford. The firm’s technology & innovation director Dr Ben Herbert said: “This agreement enables Stopford to fast-track the development of the CircuPlast technology to meet the plastics management and sustainability...