Chemical recycling pioneer Agilyx Corporation, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, has developed technology for recycling difficult-to-recycle post-use plastic streams into polymers, chemicals, and low carbon fuels has signed a site technology license agreement with Toyo Styrene Co.
Toyo Styrene, an affiliate of Denka Company Limited, was established in April 1999 as a company of consolidated polystyrene business carved out from Denki Kagaku Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha(now Denka Co., Ltd.), Nippon Steel Chemical Co., Ltd.(now NIPPON STEEL Chemical & Material Co., Ltd.), and Daicel Chemical Co.
Toyo Styrene will deploy the Agilyx technology near Toyo Styrene's facility in the Chiba Prefecture of Japan. The facility will focus on recycling post-use polystyrene back to styrene monomer. Toyo Styrene has been a leader in developing eco-friendly products for the efficient use of plastics, said Joe Vaillancourt, CEO of Agilyx.
"This announcement marks our formal entrance into the Asian markets to deliver circular pathways for plastics."
Agilyx and Toyo Styrene will commence engineering and development of the facility immediately. The state-of-the-art depolymerisation plant will have a processing capacity of up to 10 tons per day of post-use polystyrene.
Toyo Styrene will purify the styrene monomer oil produced from the technology into a high purified styrene monomer using their proprietary purification technology. The manufacture of styrene through depolymerisation of post-use polystyrene has a lower carbon footprint as compared to virgin styrene monomer.
The facility is expected to commence operations in early in 2022. Sanshiro Matsushita, President of Toyo Styrene noted that ‘this is the very beginning for true circular economy society in Japan’.
“We will achieve that recycled "refreshed" PS is able to use for PS food containers with no problem with both quality and safety," he said.