PureCycle Technologies has entered into a strategic partnership with Gulfspan Industrial LLC for the construction of its modular processing lines for its PP recycling modules, the company has announced. To that end, PureCycle has reserved construction space at Gulfspan’s pipe fabrication centre in Beaumont, Texas.
PureCycle is already collaborating with Gulfspan on its various upcoming construction projects: the company is supporting PureCycle’s existing strategic partners on the construction of PureCycle's first recycling plant in Ironton, Ohio and the pre-planning activities for its cluster facility in Augusta, Georgia.
This second plant, the location of which was only announced in July, will have the capacity for up to five processing lines with the capability to produce up to 650 million pounds of rPP toward PureCycle's one-billion-pound goal. Engineering for the cluster facility was started in Q2 2021 with construction set to begin in Q1 2022.
Construction on the Ironton facility is already well underway with commercial production expected to commence in the fourth quarter of 2022. PureCycle has already presold more than 20 years of rPP output from the Ohio plant
The present collaboration will serve to centralise and streamline PureCycle's module construction process, allowing the PP recycling modules to be built and transported to sites across the world.
"Streamlining the process of building and installing modular plants means we intend to build faster and more cost effectively, thereby allowing us to increase our recycling capacity. Our mission is to have every person, household and business view polypropylene as a sustainable resource,” said Dustin Olson, PureCycle chief manufacturing officer.
PureCycle uses licensed proprietary super-critical solvent purification technology to recycle waste PP into ultra-pure recycled-PP (rPP) for applications spanning consumer goods, automotive, building and construction, and industrial uses.
Developed by Procter & Gamble, the process removes colour, odour and contaminants from plastic waste feedstock, transforming it into a virgin-like ultra-pure recycled polypropylene.
A physical purification process, it uses a non-toxic solvent to extract impurities and contaminants from recovered waste polypropylene. As the process does not involve depolymerisation, it requires far less energy than other chemical recycling approaches, such as those based on pyrolysis. It is also more energy-efficient compared to the production of virgin PP.