BioBTX participates in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 backed research and innovation project CIRCULAR FOAM. The Circular Foam project focusses on the rigid PU (PolyUrethane) foams, which are used extensively in construction and refrigerators. These foams are at the moment very difficult to recycle. The majority of it is being incinerated to recover heat and electricity. However, these foams can be used to produce the raw materials for the same foams.
The Circular Foam project aims to achieve full circularity of these PU foams. Such an undertaking requires all parties involved in the production, fabrication, collection, and recycling of the foams. The consortium is thus a collection of all these actors. The project is headed by multinational Covestro.
BioBTX is involved in the project due to its extensive knowledge regarding pyrolysis and catalytic upgrading of pyrolysis vapours. This knowledge will be used and extended for the chemical recycling of the PU foams. While the ultimate goal of the project is to recycle all PU foams, a more tangible result is the goal of producing a whole circular refrigerator from recycled PU foam. BioBTX will then perform the chemical recycling of the PU foams on their pilot plant to produce the required chemical building blocks for this refrigerator.
Some of our partners within Circular Foam: Covestro, Electrolux, Interseroh, REDWAVE, Unilin, Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Technische Universität Dortmund, DECHEMA, and Jülich GmbH.
Link to the project page: https://circular-foam.eu/
