Recycling is an integral part of Solvay’s sustainability strategy.
Solvay encourages recycling processes particularly for plastics and fluorinated gases and encourages the establishment of regional and national agreements for collection and recycling.
SOLVAY solutions for recycling
The VINYLOOP® Ferrara (Italy) industrial recycling unit
It operates since 2001 and has a capacity of 10,000 tons a year. It makes use of PVC-based composites, and recycles the PVC by separating it from the other constituents by selective dissolution.
The Vinyloop process is using a selective solvent which dissolves the PVC resin matrix, while keeping all PVC compounding additives and releasing the secondary materials.
The PVC resin and additives are then recovered by precipitation in water - the originality of the process - to give a regenerated PVC compound.
After implementation of new technologies based on centrifuge in the Ferrara plant, Texyloop is fully operating since mid-2010.
Fluorinated products
Solvay’s fluorinated waste recovery process offers downstream users of fluorocarbon gases CFCs and HCFCs the ability to recover them. Currently, it runs three industrial fluor recovery units.
The SF6-ReUse
An insulating gas essential to the safety and capital cost reduction of high- and medium-voltage electrical installations, is also a greenhouse gas and requires recovery and recycling at the end of its life.
Now, it can be sent to Solvay’s recycling plant at Bad Wimpfen (Germany) and reused for commercial applications. This allows for a complete closed product cycle without emissions into the atmosphere.
A similar program is under consideration for Asia.
The SF6-ReUse concept forms part of a voluntary program enabling the industry to reduce emissions to an absolute minimum.
