FEEDSTOCK RECYCLING is a particularly attractive option for difficult to recycle plastics that allows them to be turned into valuable chemical building blocks that can then be used in various applications. Examples of suitable streams for feedstock recycling include laminated and composite plastics, low quality mixed plastics streams and plastics contaminated with food, soil, etc. Processes such as gasification and pyrolysis break down plastic products to produce synthesis gas (syngas) as well as other liquid and semi-liquid products. In addition today new depolymerisation processes are under development to convert some plastics types back into monomers for the production of virgin plastics.

Thanks to a significant development effort, notably supported by the plastics industry, some feedstock recycling applications have reached technological maturity and have become economically viable enough to be used in industrial-scale installations within the metals industry as a reducing agent.

Feedstock recycling finds applications in blast furnaces and in applications to convert iron and plastic-containing electrical and electronic waste in metal smelters in order to recycle precious metals. In such applications the plastics are gasified into syngas and replace coke, coal or natural gas to act as a reducing agent to withdraw oxygen from the iron ore or other oxidized metals to produce pure metal.

PAGEV is committed to maintaining its contribution to the further development of feedstock recycling as a valuable supplementary recovery option for plastics waste.