Covestro, a leading supplier in the polymer materials industry, has announced plans to invest in a pilot plant dedicated to elastomer recycling at its Leverkusen, Germany, site.
The new project, representing a double-digit million euro investment, aims to advance a novel chemical recycling process specifically for Vulkollan elastomers. This newly developed technology not only facilitates the recycling of such products as end-of-life forklift tires but also significantly reduces the carbon footprint by up to two-thirds compared to virgin materials.
The company expects the pilot plant to reach technical completion in about a year.
It marks an important milestone for our elastomer products, said Thomas Braig, head of the Elastomers business unit.
“With the successful scale-up of this new recycling process, we address the demand of our customers for end-of-life solutions and carbon footprint reduction while assuring the high quality of our elastomer products,” he said. “At the same time, this pilot plant is an invitation for players along the value chain to cooperate on developing a circular setup and the reverse value chain for end-of-life materials.”
Covestro’s Vulkollan systems are used for high-performance applications such as forklift wheels, railway bumper elements and automotive vibration control components.
The new chemical recycling process is a game-changer for the elastomers industry. Unlike mechanical recycling methods, this approach converts end-of-life elastomer materials into their chemical building blocks, allowing for the re-use of highly purified monomers in new applications.
Due to the high yield of the recycling process, end-of-life Vulkollan materials can be re-introduced into new automotive jounce bumpers and forklift tires via a mass balancing approach.
“The new chemical recycling process addresses the unique challenges of elastomer materials, which are trusted to be very resistant and long-lasting. Downcycling is not an option for this high-performance application,” said Markus Dugal, head of process technology at Covestro. “This technology allows us to recycle a high mass fraction of the end-of-life material and, in this way, to reduce the environmental impact of our elastomer production.”
The pilot plant will provide crucial input on the process of further scaling the technology, testing the process with various waste streams and with various end-of-life materials, paving the way for the development of a larger commercial recycling plant in the future.
