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Recycling through Pyrolysis: A Route with Great Promise for Circular Packaging

Carlos Ludlow Palafox, CEO of Enval Ltd. and the creator of a unique technology based on microwave-induced pyrolysis for flexible packaging including plastic laminates, shares his vision.

Carlos Ludlow Palafox, inventor of microwave-induced pyrolysis for recycling flexible packaging
Carlos Ludlow Palafox, who has developed a singular patented solution with microwave-induced pyrolysis for flexible plastic packaging –even laminates including aluminum— which recuperates materials from packaging waste into ready-to-use oils, had a conversation with Mundo PMMI.
Enval, Ltd.

In the relentless global battle against the effects of the aggression towards the environment, diversity of perspectives is a constant source of controversy, but also of entrepreneurship and innovative technologies. This is the case of Enval Ltd., a company based at Huntingdon, United Kingdom. The absence of collaborative actions from different players within the production and consumption chains seems to stand in the way of achieving significant advancements in the mitigation or even revert their negative effects on our environment. 

However, urgency is manifest; and where most advancements towards the development of high-impact strategies in defense of the environment arise is in the efforts pushing the creation of innovative technologies to efficiently reuse materials and reincorporate them to the production chains.

With a critical yet realistic sense, Carlos Ludlow Palafox —who has developed a singular patented solution with microwave-induced pyrolysis for flexible plastic packaging, even laminates including aluminum, which recuperates materials from packaging waste into ready-to-use oils— drew, in a conversation with Mundo PMMI a clear picture of the possibilities currently opening worldwide through pyrolysis technologies. He has created and developed such technique from his company, Enval Ltd., which he built on the foundations of his studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

Carlos Ludlow Palafox, inventor of microwave-induced pyrolysis for recycling flexible packagingCarlos Ludlow Palafox, who has developed a singular patented solution with microwave-induced pyrolysis for flexible plastic packaging –even laminates including aluminum— which recuperates materials from packaging waste into ready-to-use oils, had a conversation with Mundo PMMI.Enval, Ltd.

Easing the way

The concern for the environment is still far from being vastly adopted by society, so changing the habits of citizens feels like a humongous task for which we do not have much time. This is where the importance lies for points of view like the one Carlos Ludlow Palafox expressed when he stated that “in some way we need to make all human activities less impactful on the environment, without it depending on the attitudes, actions, or customs of individuals”. To further explain his vision, the director of Enval Ltd. emphasizes the importance of developing alternative solutions. “If, at the same time, we allow for more education, let people worry more, it is all gains. But we are not going to modify the uses and customs of seven million people in the world overnight, so we need to do something about these plastic packaging”, points out the chemical engineer from the Ibero-American University in Mexico with a doctorate in Chemical Engineering from Cambridge University.

Besides the innovations that brands are permanently developing to improve the functionality and sustainability of their packaging, developing new technologies is allowing new possibilities for plastics that until not long ago could not find a path towards recycling can now be taken advantage of as raw materials that get reinserted into production chains. “In most cases, used flexible plastic packaging is not exploitable with the recycling technologies available, but they are excellent from an environmental point of view. Why do we strive, then, to change them without doing anything to advance the technology to recycle them?”, asks Carlos Ludlow Palafox right before he tells us about the road to his technological development. “If we have flexible plastic packaging that cost us years and so much money to develop, and that besides are so effective in the protection of foods, it does not make much sense to insist in the search for their replacements and to modify so abruptly our chains, when, on the other hand, we have the capabilities to reuse them through novel chemical recycling technologies”, he adds.

Positive warming

By the time Ludlow Palafox began working in the world of packaging, he focused on developing a pyrolytic process for the recycling of plastics, an endeavor that by then proved to be insufficiently attractive economically. “Plastics from crude oil, which already has an enormous installed infrastructure —Carlos explains—, so competing in that field might turn out to be extremely complicated when you get to thinking about waste, separation, reprocessing, and so on. Compare that with a gigantic infrastructure to extract the oil from the ground, take to refineries and pass it through polymerization plants to obtain new and cheap plastics”.

Developed at Cambridge, then by Enval, microwave-induced pyrolysis offers promise for package waste recycling.With the application of microwave-induced pyrolysis, technology originally developed in Cambridge University and then by Enval Ltd., a wide field is opening for action towards processing materials that at this time are not recyclable, especially those derived from flexible plastic packaging.Enval, Ltd.

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