Performance Polymers

Your next polyurethane will be recycled

This morning, after a good night’s sleep on a smooth mattress, you slip on your shoes, grab some fresh food in your refrigerator and step out of your house. You settle into your car, where you take place on a comfortable seat. Behind the steering wheel, you embark on your own journey travelling along safe roads. Today and every day, one particular material is making each step of your journey a success: polyurethanes. As a versatile material, polyurethanes (PU) provide benefits everywhere in our daily lives but it also has its own journey. Indeed, the future of polyurethanes goes hand in hand with recycling, ensuring sustainability for the generations to come.

The global market for polyurethanes amounted to nearly 26 million tons in 2022, with forecasts predicting an increase to 31 million tons by 2030^[1]. As a leader in the polyurethanes business for more than 60 years, BASF is fully convinced of its versatility and the value it brings to customers and the society. That's why BASF keeps on innovating by improving its properties and tapping into new applications – always with sustainability in mind.

The sustainability dilemma

On one hand, PU help to significantly reduce energy consumption and consequently carbon dioxide emissions. It is commonly used as high-performance thermal insulation materials in the construction industry and in household appliances such as refrigerators and freezers.

For example, the production of one kilogram of polyurethane rigid foam releases 3.5 kg of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

Over a 50-year lifespan, that single kilogram of PU prevents up to 350 kg of carbon emissions through less need for using heating or cooling.

On the other hand, the current linear production and consumption model “take-make-use-dispose” is not sustainable enough as it generates significant quantities of avoidable waste, pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. This undermines global climate objectives and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

To tackle this, the only solution is to transition from the linear model to a circular economy based on circular carbon and renewable energy. BASF is actively taking ownership, innovating, and contributing to circularity – every single day. Once polyurethanes reach their end-of-life, efficient recycling methods should help reduce waste and CO₂ emissions from incineration.

However, the recovery of polyurethanes comes with three major challenges:

The current waste management infrastructure does not provide sufficient quantities of PU waste streams of adequate quality and purity.
There is no business model yet that ensures the economic viability of the required circular economy for PU.
Numerous recycling technologies already exist today but need to be scaled up.

How to overcome these challenges?

A systemic change is required. It all starts with the need for a regulatory framework that incentivizes a circular economy for PU. Such a regulation should include well-designed extended producer responsibility schemes and the mass balance approach as an enabler for a competitive transformation towards circularity.

In a collaborative approach between stakeholders, manufacturers, retailers, customers, and waste management companies will have to work together towards increasing recycling rates and reducing waste.

In parallel, BASF focuses on what it can do best: developing and scaling up existing recycling technologies to accelerate the systemic change. This part remains challenging since PU products cannot be melted and reshaped like thermoplastics. This poses a hurdle to recycling[2].

Recycling of PU

Because of the wide range of physical properties and broad applicability, there is no “one fits all” circular solution for polyurethanes. In principle, the three options below are possible. The solution of choice depends on the availability and the quality of the waste stream.

Mechanical recycling

This method has been used for PU foam for decades. Production cut-offs are transformed into so-called trim (foam flocks) which in turn can become rebonded foam. The reshaped foam is used in products such as carpet underlay, gym mats, or acoustic insulation. BASF enables this technology by providing the isocyanate binder.

A newly developed technology, related to mechanical recycling of thermoplastic materials, builds on the fact that weakly crosslinked polyurethanes used in upholstery or footwear can be melted and therefore reprocessed in the polyol component of a new polyurethane system. Initially developed to support customers to reduce waste in their production, the technology would be applicable for post-consumer waste as well. First customers following this approach are the famous furniture company Vitra and the steering wheel producer ZF Lifetec.

Depolymerization

This process to recover the raw materials (isocyanates and polyols) from PU has attracted increased interest in the recent past mainly to address the issue of PU mattresses being landfilled or incinerated at the end of their life. The company NEVEON further processes these recycled polyols into high-quality mattress foams, whose polyol component has an unprecedentedly high recycled content of 80 percent. Another technology to obtain a recycled polyol can be applied to PU rigid foam mainly from old refrigerators. The recycling of this post-consumer waste is the focus of a collaboration between KraussMaffei, RAMPF, REMONDIS, and BASF. Target of this joint approach is the development and scale-up of a continuous chemical depolymerization process for high-efficiency recycling.

Such technologies can be commercially applied when sufficiently clean waste streams are available like for mattresses or refrigerators. However, PU are often used in complex assemblies where different materials are combined to manufacture specialized parts and products. For these, the recovery of PU might be technologically difficult and thus too costly.

High-temperature recycling

Ultimately, thermochemical recycling comes into play. For carbon rich plastics like polyethylene (PE) or polypropylene (PP), pyrolysis which takes place in an oxygen-free high-temperature environment is the solution of choice.

For more complex waste streams containing polyesters, polyamides or polyurethanes, gasification is the preferred solution. Here, the goal is to transform the solid waste into gas that can be further used as raw material. This reduces the demand for new fossil feedstock and prevents incineration.

BASF is convinced that plastics are part of the solution for a sustainable future. With their unrivalled versatility and contribution to energy efficiency, polyurethanes are essential components of our daily lives. To keep our common journey going, we must enable and scale up complementary recycling technologies. This is the challenge that BASF and its partners are taking on, to ensure that your next polyurethane is recycled.

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^[1]: Polyurethane global market volume 2030 | Statista

^[2]: Recycling polyurethane becomes simpler thanks to new method

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