Abstract
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is a versatile polymer with a forecast market of 4 Mtons/y by 2025, and 6 USD billion by 2027. Each year, 10% of the produced cast sheets, extrusion sheets, or granules PMMA end up as post-production waste, accounting for approximately 30 000 tons/y in Europe only. To guide the future recycling efforts, we investigated the risks of depolymerization process economics for different PMMA scraps feedstock, capital expenditure (CAPEX), and regenerated MMA (r-MMA) prices via a Monte-Carlo simulation. An analysis of plastic recycling plants operating with similar technologies confirmed how a maximum 10 M USD plant (median cost) is what a company should aim for, based on our hypothesis. The capital investment and the r-MMA quality have the main impacts on the profitability. Depending on the pursued outcome, we identified three most suitable scenarios. Lower capital-intensive plants (Scenarios 4 and 8) provide the fastest payback time, but this generates a lower quality monomer, and therefore lower appeal on the long term. On 10 or 20 years of operation, companies should target the very best r-MMA quality, to achieve the highest net present value (Scenario 6). Product quality comes from the feedstock choice, depolymerization, and purification technologies. Counterintuitively, a plant processing low quality scraps available for free (Scenario 7), and therefore producing low purity r-MMA, has the highest probability of negative net present value after 10 years of operation, making it a high-risk scenario. Western countries (especially Europe), call for more and more pure r-MMA, hopefully comparable to the virgin material. With legislations on recycled products becoming more stringent, low quality product might not find a market in the future. To convince shareholders and government bodies, companies should demonstrate how funds and subsidies directly translate into higher quality products (more attractive to costumers), more economically viable, and with a wider market.
Highlights
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), known as acrylic or acrylic glass, as well as Perspex, Plexiglas, and Altuglas, is a transparent thermoplastic and an alternative to glass due to its UV resistance and transparency.The methyl methacrylate (MMA) global market was valued 7.8 billion US dollars in 2018 [1], and the production volume assessed around 3.9 Million tons in 2019/2020 [2,3]
To guide the future recycling efforts, we investigate the economics of PMMA recycling, detailing the effect of feedstock type, product quality, and capital investment
Scenarios 4 and 8 are representative of a second-hand plant, or a very cheap technology (Capex 1.3 M USD), that treats mixed scraps to produce low-quality regenerated MMA (r-MMA) selling at 20% discount price
Summary
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), known as acrylic or acrylic glass, as well as Perspex, Plexiglas, and Altuglas, is a transparent thermoplastic and an alternative to glass due to its UV resistance and transparency. The molten metal has a high specific heat which is efficiently transferred to the PMMA When these units are operated properly there is no contamination of the product nor the environment. When low quality scraps are processed, a high amount of solid residues are produced, contaminated with the metal used This generates additional cost to dispose them of properly. Hot sand is circulated between a depolymerization reactor and a regenerator where carbon deposits are burned and sand is reheated This process has been piloted at rather large scale, but was not industrialized yet, several variations have been investigated. The technology investigated in the MMAtwo research project is based on a “Twin-screw extruder” This process was used at industrial scale on high-quality cast PMMA scraps, and is investigated in the project for all kinds of PMMA wastes, including post-industrial and post-consumer wastes.
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