Scientists Can Now Break Down a Notorious Plastic Type
Styrenyx breaks down waste polystyrene, a common hard plastic, into its original building block: styrene monomer. This includes flame-retardant-laden and other distressed feedstocks that are otherwise difficult to recycle. It uses controlled temperatures, with no catalyst required, and is the result of 8 generations of development, over 20 years of R&D, and 22 patents (Agilyx, n.d.).
Polystyrene waste has long been treated as a dead end. Styrenyx and TruStyrenyx technology turn it into a renewable source of virgin-quality material, keeping it in circulation instead of landfill. Through pyrolysis, waste is depolymerized into Agilyx Styrene Oil (ASO), then purified into styrene monomer at >99.8 wt% purity, ready as feedstock for polymer production (Agilyx, n.d.).
Agilyx's chemical recycling technology tackles the global plastic waste problem by processing hard-to-recycle plastics that traditional recycling methods cannot, with a significantly lower carbon footprint (Agilyx, n.d.).
Polystyrene is a difficult material to recycle without including secondary materials, which makes it a heterogeneous mixture. Agilix has developed a technology that they claim uses depolymerization to create new plastic without the inclusion of other materials that were gathered along the way. This creates a new outlet for polystyrene to be recycled, creating new plastic from the chemical remnants of the old, rather than melting it down and reforming it into something new. These new innovations in science show that people are working diligently to solve the problems in this world, even if it means approaching them on a molecular level.
References
StyrenyxTM | Advanced recycling technology for polystyrene waste. (n.d.). Agilyx.
https://www.agilyx.com/styrenyx
