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PMMA – your material for circular design challenges?
PMMA, or acrylic, has been one of the world’s most commonly used plastics since its invention in the 1930s, used in everything from cars and homes to architecture and construction. Now, it’s moving into a fully circular future as Mitsubishi Chemical Methacrylates (MCM) drives a major recycling project.
Making supply chains circular
In a global economy, complex supply chains can make it difficult to track information about the origin of materials. How do consumers know whether the product they’re buying comes from sustainable sources or contains recycled content? How can this be improved?
Positive results in our recycling purification trials
As part of our project to make acrylic fully circular, we recently ran purification trials for methyl methacrylate (MMA) recycled from waste acrylic (PMMA).
Positive results in our recycling purification trials
As part of our project to make acrylic fully circular, we recently ran purification trials for methyl methacrylate (MMA) recycled from waste acrylic (PMMA).
Background
Circular MMA can be made by a process called molecular recycling, where acrylic (PMMA) is broken down by depolymerization to MMA. However, until now, no technology has existed to do this safely and reliably, using mixed feedstock, or that can produce MMA to the high purity required to meet customers’ expectations.
Results
After proving that molecular recycling is possible on a large scale with our technology provider, Agilyx, using a variety of feedstocks (coloured and clear PMMA, extruded and cast PMMA, with post-industrial and post-consumer waste) we recently completed refinement trials to test the purity of the final product. The purification process worked so effectively at removing contaminants that the result was recycled MMA with the same purity as virgin MMA.
David Smith, Circular Economy Lead, says:
“This is a very positive result. At the start of the project, we set ourselves a stretching goal of being able to produce circular MMA from recycling waste PMMA with the same level of purity as virgin MMA. Thanks to the hard work of our project team and partners, we have successfully achieved this. We are now finalising the definition of this technology to support a first-in-class commercial scale plant in Europe.”
Read more updates from this project
· How can molecular recycling transform the acrylic industry?
