Toray announces breakthrough in PPS resin recycling process

June 1, 2023 | By Mary Bailey

Toray Industries, Inc. (Tokyo) announced that its marketing & sales subsidiary, Toray Resins Europe GmbH (TREU) has established a recycling process for glass-fiber-reinforced polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) resin waste from injection molding processes. TREU created its process by leveraging proprietary compounding technology in collaborating with tolling partner MKV GmbH Kunststoffgranulate (www.mkv-kunststoff.com), a compounding company based in Beselich, Germany, that specializes in recycling engineering & high-performance plastics. Such resin has 50% recycled content and retains at least 90% of the mechanical strength that injection grades from original materials deliver.

SKZ – Das Kunststoff-Zentrum, has calculated and verified that PPS made with this recycling process can deliver a carbon footprint that is around 45% lower than that of original PPS. The calculation was conducted based on the international LCA standards ISO 14040, ISO 14044 and the standard ISO 14067 "Carbon footprint of products". SKZ, also known as the German Plastics Center, is a leading plastics testing and research institution based in Würzburg.

TREU supplies PPS resins to customers throughout Europe and is beginning to promote this recycle PPS as Ecouse TORELINA. Ecouse (pronounced Eco-use) is Toray's integrated, worldwide brand for recycled materials and products.

Glass fiber-reinforced PPS offers outstanding flame resistance, long-term durability, and chemical resistance. It thus has diverse applications, including electric vehicles and other automobiles, electrical and electronic equipment, and water-related parts. Growing global concerns about the environment have accelerated recycling demand in recent years. Conventional glass fiber-reinforced PPS recycling has had repeated molding shortens and breaks the glass fibers, greatly degrading mechanical strength and this issue has constrained recycling rates.

Under the Toray Group Sustainability Vision, the company has made realizing a world in which resources are managed sustainably one of its goals for 2050. Toray will keep striving to cater to customer demand for eco-friendly resins, thereby materializing its corporate philosophy of contributing to society by creating new value through innovative ideas, technologies, and products.