Eastman Media Center APR 2023 / press release / Read original article
Eastman and partners announce success with automotive market recycling study
New technology provides cost-effective options to create sustainable materials from automotive plastic waste.
Eastman today announced the successful completion of the closed-loop recycling project for automotive mixed plastic waste. Through a collaborative effort, Eastman, the United States Automotive Materials Partnership LLC (USAMP), automotive recycler PADNOS and global automotive interior supplier Yanfeng, demonstrated first of its kind plastic recycling from the by-product of shredding end-of-life vehicles. (Watch auto circularity video)
When automobiles are at the end of their life, metals, tires and glass account for 80%–90% of the materials that can be recycled through traditional mechanical recycling streams. The other 10%–20%, referred to as automotive shredder residue (ASR), consists of mixed plastic and other nonrecycled materials that currently end up in landfills or are recovered through waste-to-energy technologies.
Under this initiative, PADNOS supplied a plastic-rich fraction of ASR as a sustainable feedstock to Eastman’s carbon renewal technology (CRT). Eastman successfully demonstrated the addition and conversion of that ASR feedstock into a synthesis gas (syngas) which is subsequently used downstream in the production of its polyester and cellulosic thermoplastics. Resins from this production process were further formulated and then supplied to Yanfeng. The parts molded by Yanfeng for demonstration were successfully tested to meet a variety of OEM – Ford, GM, and Stellantis – requirements, thereby demonstrating proof of concept for a truly circular solution.
The study proved feasibility of Eastman’s carbon renewal technology (CRT), one of Eastman’s two molecular recycling technologies, which breaks down the plastic-rich ASR into molecular building blocks. By recycling these complex plastics in CRT, Eastman can replace fossil-based feedstock and create polymers without compromising performance for use in new automotive applications.
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