The North American Leader
of Polystyrene Recycling
Pyrowave has initiated the North American Polystyrene Recycling Consortium announced at the G7 ministerial meeting in September 2018, with ReVital Polymers and INEOS Styrolution.
The Pyrowave technology: Electrifying progress
Regenerate the polystyrene products to infinity
« When you talk about recycled PS for food and medical applications, you need virgin PS quality.
We are committed to turn depolymerization into reality to provide the market with this highest possible quality. »
We are committed to turn depolymerization into reality to provide the market with this highest possible quality. »
Dr. Norbert Niessner
SCS Chair of Technologies
The circular economy of plastics
1) Preconditioner prepares plastic feedstock, including shredded feedstock below 5 cm.
5) The regenerated monomer is used by industry to remanufacture many products with properties identical to products made with monomers from petroleum.
4) Liquid monomer is purified and meets the same specs as virgin material.
2) The Pyrowave patented reactor takes out plastic building blocks using proprietary microwave technology.
3) The plastic building blocks are separated from impurities by distillation to recover virgin-like monomers.
3) The plastic building blocks are separated from impurities by distillation to recover virgin-like monomers.
The Pyrowave Technology
Pyrowave’s patented microwave catalytic depolymerization technology provides the most advanced high-power microwave technology worldwide, now at the forefront of a new revolution designed to increase resource efficiency.
The 600 Series CMD reactor is specifically designed for polystyrene (PS) raw materials and can process the full range of expanded polystyrene (EPS) and high impact polystyrene (HIPS).
- The continuous process firstly mixes plastics in a preparation tank, which helps remove contaminants such as labels and films, in addition to other impurities. This also helps inject plastics into the reactor more easily.
- The processed polystyrene is introduced into the reactor where it is mixed with silicon carbide particles to interact with a high energy microwave field.
- Using electrical power and microwaves, the developed process breaks down polymer chains into monomers (depolymerization).
- Post-consumer polystyrene is thus converted into a liquid rich in blocks – the monomers – which are then purified and meet the same specifications as the monomers used in the industry.
- These purified and recycled blocks are then reprocessed by a manufacturer and restored into virgin resins, to manufacture a variety of products such as polystyrene, synthetic rubber, latex and plastics for electronic products.
Therefore, new products and packaging can be manufactured from 100% recycled polystyrene.
Pyrowave Technology Benefits
- A modular technology that helps increase the local existing sorting facilities’ technology supply and can be rolled out quickly on the market.
- A process that converts materials with little market demand into high-value-added products on the global market and compatible with standard virgin products used by the petrochemical industry.
- A microwave system using about 15 times less energy than the current process to manufacture styrene monomers from virgin resources, and the heat released can be recovered to heat buildings.
- A technology that helps recycle post-consumer polystyrene products and packaging, including contaminated food containers.
- Its current yield can reach up to 95% in monomer production and has a processing capacity ranging from 100 kg/h to 200 kg/h. One module can therefore produce between 500 and 1000 tons/year)
- The generated products prevent the extraction of petroleum materials, therefore reducing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 3 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per ton of processed plastics.
- Pyrowave technology is chiefly designed to process polystyrene (plastic # 6), but could possibly process polypropylene (plastic # 5) and polyethylene (plastics # 2 and # 4).