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This is the first step in operating PureCycle’s flagship polypropylene (PP) purification facility in Ironton. Once fully operational, the facility is projected to have an annual production capacity of 107 million pounds of UPR resin.
This run of post-industrial material allowed PureCycle’s manufacturing team to test the core technology concepts across various operating conditions.
PureCycle CEO Dustin Olson said, “This is a momentous achievement for all of the stakeholders that believed in us, for PureCycle, and most importantly, our planet. No one here today will ever forget the feeling when the commercial scale pellets were produced for the first time. With this major milestone complete, we have demonstrated that the fundamental technology works as expected, and at scale. This is another important step in our mission towards helping to solve the plastic waste crisis. We will now build upon this accomplishment to optimize our process in order to demonstrate our technology across a variety of operating conditions and feedstocks.”
One of the difficulties of recycling PP is that it comes in many shapes, sizes, and contamination levels. The benefit of PureCycle’s technology is that it is designed to purify a variety of shapes, sizes and contaminants traditionally found in waste polypropylene. PureCycle UPR resin will be a like-virgin material, easily colorable, and not only 100% recyclable, but the Ironton facility is projected to use 79% less energy than the production of virgin PP resin. It’s also estimated to release 35% fewer carbon emissions than new PP manufacturing, further substantiating the PureCycle UPR resin’s sustainability benefits.
