Chemical recycler Agilyx (Tigard, Oregon / USA; www.agilyx.com) and Toyo Styrene (Osaka / Japan; www.toyo-st.co.jp/english) – an affiliate of Denka (Tokyo / Japan; www.denka.co.jp/eng) – have announced the 30% completion of the final phase of design development for a facility that will use Agilyx’s technology near Toyo Styrene’s facility in Chiba / Japan.

The facility will focus on turning post-use polystyrene back into styrene monomer and is to be designed to convert up to 10 t/day of post-industrial and post-consumer PS into the precursor. According to Agilyx, the styrene monomer produced from this process has a significantly lower carbon footprint than virgin monomer.

Sanshiro Matsushita, president of Toyo Styrene, said: “There is a real need in Japan for chemical recycling of PS, which the market is calling for, hence providing an ideal atmosphere for this project.”

Recently, Agilyx had also announced the initiation of a feasibility study with Braskem (São Paulo / Brazil; www.braskem.com) to explore the development and construction of an advanced plastics recycling project in North America (see Plasteurope.com of 14.01.2021).