Toray Develops Solvent-Based Recycling Technology to Recover PPS From Waste

PPS is a super engineering plastic with high heat resistance and chemical resistance. Demand is growing, especially for automotive parts and electrical and electronic components. Recovering usable PPS from end-of-life products has been difficult due to two reasons: contaminants are hard to remove, and there has not yet been an effective recycling process.

Stricter regulations on resource circulation, particularly in Europe, have also made post-consumer recycling increasingly important in the automotive and other industries.

Due to its high chemical resistance, PPS is nearly insoluble in solvents. To address this challenge, Toray has leveraged decades of PPS manufacturing expertise. Their process selectively dissolves and crystallizes PPS from scrap material, while removing glass fibers and other impurities.

This technology separates PPS while keeping it in its polymer form, rather than breaking it down into monomers. According to Toray, skipping this decomposition step removes impurities more effectively than traditional chemical recycling processes. The recycled material maintains the same molecular weight and melting point as virgin PPS.

A preliminary study by Toray indicates that recycled PPS produced using this technology can reduce cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas emissions compared to PPS made from Toray’s virgin materials. Toray is currently validating these potential reductions through ongoing demonstration tests.

With the completion of the research, Donglei is conducting a scale-up demonstration through the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s FY2024 project titled “Supporting Enhanced Resilience and Autonomy of Circular Economy Systems through Industry-Government-Academia Collaboration.”

Commercial supply is targeted for around 2030. Toray plans to collaborate with partners in the automotive, recycling, and other industries to establish a resource circulation system. This system will cover everything from collecting waste materials containing PPS to reusing recycled PPS.