P2PC

Plastics to Precious Chemicals.

P2PC

The P2PC project aspires to cope with the urgent issue of plastics waste management. The project targets the challenge of increasing plastic waste volumes and diversity on the one hand, as well as the establishment of circular material schemes instead of value destruction. The most important premise of P2PC is that by pyrolysis, plastic waste that is currently being burned or landfilled can be a source of diverse chemical building blocks, the so-called ā€œprecious chemicalsā€. Its target, in other words, is to turn plastic waste into value. 

More concrete, instead of using waste plastic as energy source or cracking it down to elemental units (e.g., ethylene, syngas) P2PC targets the extraction of valuable molecules by soft cracking, separation and chemical modification. This approach is quite novel and implies fundamental research. This way, P2PC can be considered as the next step in Flandersā€™ efforts to lead the global effort in tackling the challenge of waste plastics.

Plastics to Precious Chemicals (P2PC) is a VLAIO supported ICON research project and is situated in the category ā€˜Sidestream Valorizationā€™. 

Objectives

ā€‹The overarching aim of this project is shortcutting the circle of plastics-to-chemicals, whereby carbon-carbon bonds are broken as much as needed, but as limited as possible, to retain their intrinsic value. Additionally, recognizing that environmental sustainability is not improved without actual future implementation, the innovative recycling system resulting from this project should yield an economically viable value chain. The final result will be a smart combination of feedstock selection, pyrolysis parameters, functionalization and downstream processing to convert plastics into precious chemicals.

Project details

Project type
Icon
Innovation Programme
Proces Intensification and Transformation
Project status
In completion
Approved on
04/04/2019
Project date
-
Budget
ā‚¬3 092 101
Subsidy
ā‚¬2 182 652