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Upcycling Vinyl Waste Plastics

Renewcat is developing a novel process to convert waste polyvinyl chloride (PVC) streams into polyethylene waxes while simultaneously recovering the chloride for re-use in PVC production. The high value polyethylene waxes produced with Renewcat technology can be utilized in various markets such as PVC production, construction, and DIY waxes for consumers.

Critical Need

PVC is one of the most common plastics in the world, with critical applications of PVC in medical, construction, and household uses. Despite being ubiqituous in waste streams worldwide PVC is typically not recycled due to the high cost of recycling PVC with conventional technologies. Meanwhile, its presence in waste streams complicates waste-to-energy processes, such as incineration, as its thermal treatment releases toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons, dioxins, and HCl. Furthermore, landfilling PVC waste has been criticized due to the potential leaching of legacy additives that are toxic and carcinogenic. While there exist hydrothermal and catalytic processes to dechlorinate PVC that avoid producing HCl and chlorinated organics, they do not convert PVC to valuable products, limiting their economic potential. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop an economically competitive method that converts PVC into a value added products in a usable form and be tolerant to common contaminants.

Supplemental Need for this Technology

PVC manufacturers face a growing problem. Their products are simply not recyclable and cannot currently be disposed of safely. For this reason PVC producers face upcoming circular economy mandates as well as consumer pressure to make a more sustainable product. Novel technologies to recycle waste PVC are required for PVC manufacturers to continue operating normally even as demand for PVC products increases worldwide.

Competition

  • Landfilling costs are still relatively low reducing economic incentive to recycle
  • PVC recyclers do not recycle sufficient quantities to be competitors
  • Renewable wax products are a growing market, with strong interest from companies such as DOW

Potential Markets

Currently, almost all cable wire jacketing, automotive shredder residues, vinyl roofing and vinyl flooring is landfilled. The cost of landfilling ($50-$60/ton in the US) combined with consumer and regulatory pressure to avoid landfilling contaminated waste provides a strong economic incentive towards devising methods to reuse, recycle or upcycle PVC. Moreover, upcoming circular economy mandates, such as the proposed Break Free From Plastics Pollution Act, provide additional pressure to the PVC industry to develop new technologies to recycle PVC waste. PVC producers utilize polyethylene waxes during production of PVC products including PVC piping. This allows Renewcat produced waxes to re-enter the PVC production cycle as recycled wax products, a major gain for PVC producers.

Further downstream in the PVC lifecycle, a major pain point for the recyclers of PVC building materials when these materials meet the end of their lifecycle is the presence of a range of additives, such as colors, adhesives, and backing. Production of adhesives from PVC that can be then reused as adhesives in vinyl flooring and roofing would dramatically impact the circularity of the PVC that is integral to vinyl building products.

Key Innovation

Renewcat’s novel technology unlocks PVC as a viable waste stream for upcycling to value added products.

R & D Status of Project

Renewcat is currently prototyping the process with a small lab scale prototype successfully converting PVC into polyethylene waxes. Current R&D is focused on optimizing catalyst performance and post reaction product separation. Furthermore, Renewcat is engaged in modeling the process at scale and utilizing life cycle analysis to evaluate the potential economic and environmental impact of the process. Near future R&D will include incremental scaleup to prototype at larger volumes and testing potential scaleup reactor materials for corrosion considerations.

Team Overview

Kostas Goulas, PhD: Co-founder and chairperson of the board at Renewcat. Expert in catalysis, kinetics, and spectroscopy. Expert in biomass and plastics upcycling

Scott Svadlenak, PhD: Co-founder and President of Renewcat. Co-founded PVC upcycling effort during his PhD at Oregon State University.

Technology Profile

Status: TRL 2
Primary industry: PVC industry
Category Upcycling, catalysis, waste plastics, circularity
Estimated annual revenue: NA
Employs: NA
Social challenge: Educating the industry and the public on recycling infrastructure and how it can be improved with new technologies