Photo: Aarhus UniversityA ground-breaking method enabling plastic to be recovered and recycled effectively was first discovered.Tags: Featured, Materials & Assembly, Medical Design medical-device-market-news from_embed true © designnews.com Such innovation could pave the way to a more sustainable and less expensive future for the polyurethane market.
Transforming Waste into Value
As a versatile, robust and essential material for many products such as mattresses, insulation materials for buildings, vehicles or wind turbines construction (wind blades) polyurethane(PUR). But PUR waste is a particularly severe difficulty for the surroundings.
That is as a significant proportion of the PUoR goods disposed of worldwide are either incinerated or buried in landfills, both extremely unsustainable procedures given that the leading substances are all made from fossil oil. Worldwide, the PUR market should climb to nearly 31.3 million metric tons by 2030 with about 60% in various foam forms.
This is where the Aarhus University researchers are onto something revolutionary. This includes a technique that degrades PUR foam and then recovers the two major components of the foam in a single process step, stripping polyols—and isocyanates. From there, these materials can be used in new PUR products enabling a closed-loop use with this raw material making a step towards circularity.
A Smarter Recycling Approach
For recycling PUR, the conventional approach had been to break down the material with acid (acidolysis). However, the employed methods do not break up a degraded PUR into its monomer constituents; thus, the achieved derivative is an irreversible concoction.
In Denmark they have found a solution, the researchers of Aarhus University. Through a combination of heating the flexible PUR foam to 220°C in a reactor alongside succinic acid, they can effectively digest the material and proceed to filter it, resulting in polyols and diamines.
This process filters out the polyols leaving a quality similar to virgin polyol and allowing them to be utilized in new PUR production. This solid obtained is then made into a diamine after filtration and simple hydrolysis, a leftover which can be turned into isocyanates, and ultimately new PUR.
This method leads to an 82 weight percent recovery of the initial PUR foam material as two distinct, high-quality fractions. The discovery holds for the potential of a greener way to recycle PUR in future, cutting down waste and also reducing exhaust of fossil-based resources.
Conclusion
The scientists from Aarhus University have thus succeeded in solving one of the technical problems that must be overcome if the dream to create a more sustainable future for the polyurethane industry is to become reality. Homogeneous and selective chemical recycling of polyurethane (PUR) foam provides a great potential to be involved in this circular economy, since the development of efficient method for separation and recovery of the main PUR components can make it possible. The technology could reduce waste and environmental impact, while potentially making PUR-based product production a cheaper, more efficient process. If the production method was more widespread within the industry it has the potential to open up a much greener and sustainable future for polyurethane.
