Polyurethane is in just about everything these days. Researchers at the university of Leuven (KU Leuven) have been working for years on a way to make the ubiquitous plastic fit for a circular economy.
It makes sense that a plastic that can take so many different forms, whether rigid, soft, or pliable, would find its way to a wide variety of markets. That’s great, but what’s not so great is that its main components are produced mostly with fossil fuels and are nearly impossible to recycle properly…enter: Leuven’s bio-engineering researchers.
Long, scientific story short, a team of researchers led by Prof. Dirk De Vos have found a way to break polyurethane down into those two components that we mentioned above: polyols and isocyanates. That’s right, we’re talking about a chemical recycling process that skips the hazardous materials required to produce isocyanates. Talk about a game changer!
So ensued Purtiso, a new spinoff company that will take this new process to the next level, test it in real life, and scale it up so companies around the globe and in all kinds of markets can use this Belgian invention to sustain a circular polyurethane economy.
We’re excited to see the practical implications of this newly-developed process.
