The company depolymerises waste PBT from manufacturing processes and repolymerises the material. The new offerings include glassfiber-reinforced low warpage and hydrolysis-resistant grades.
The properties of these recycled materials are equivalent to those of PBT resin from virgin raw materials. This breakthrough should contribute to efforts to reduce carbon footprints.
Recycling resins generally poses several challenges, including contamination from foreign substances and materials and deteriorating quality of materials. Toray can provide recycled PBT resin with quality which is as high as that of virgin material by undertaking chemical recycling. This involves integrating quality control for chemicals recycling, from depolymerisation through compounding.
Toray is additionally developing chemical- and material-recycled grades using postconsumer recycled material derived from recovered products.