The Chileans turning plastic into eco-fuel and organic solvent

ELEMENTUM TURNS PLASTICS INTO ECO-FUEL AND ORGANIC SOLVENTS

Making plastic stop being plastic. That is the solution proposed by a science- and technology-based startup that, using a portable unit with a zero water footprint, converts plastic waste into an organic liquid with multiple applications.

Source: La Tercera

One of the defining elements of modern life is plastic. From food packaging to space suits, it is a versatile and inexpensive material used in an immense variety of products.

Since the 1950s, industrial plastic production has grown rapidly. Today, more than 300 million tons are produced worldwide every year, and about eight million of them end up in the ocean.

Thanks to its chemical composition, it is a very useful and durable material (it takes decades to break down), which makes it almost impossible to eliminate. All of these characteristics have made it a threat to ecosystems around the world.

In Chile it is an urgent problem. Approximately 990,000 tons of plastic are consumed each year, of which 83,679 tons (8.5%) are recycled. Dealing with plastic pollution demands creativity and recycling technologies that help with waste management

What if plastic were a raw material? That is what a technology created by Chileans does, turning the plastic problem into a solution. It is Elementum, a portable, scalable, easy-to-use modular device that, through a highly efficient thermochemical process (up to 75%), upcycles plastic waste and transforms it into organic solvents with multiple applications, such as lubricants, paint solvents or fuel additives.

Eco-friendly fuel

Elementum (originally founded as EcoFuels) was born as an idea in 2015 from two doctoral students at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the U. de Chile, Ariel Crespo and José Duguet, who sought to create their own experimental design to process plastic waste more efficiently than existing methods. Entrepreneur Moisés Godoy joined the team this year.

Ariel Crespo, CEO of Elementum, from the Department of Chemical Engineering, Biotechnology and Materials at the U. de Chile, says they wanted to treat plastic differently from conventional recycling. “More than 90% of the plastic produced is not recycled due to logistical issues, contamination with impurities, the limits of conventional recycling and costs driven by the long distances between collection points and recycling plants, in addition to problems cleaning and sorting it for recycling,” he says.

The technology aims to reduce the high logistics costs of traditional plastic recycling by up to 80%, especially for institutions that must comply with the Extended Producer Responsibility and Recycling Promotion Law (Ley REP).

This technology transforms a wide variety of plastics into an organic liquid that can be used as a paint solvent, a lubricant or anticorrosive for mechanical maintenance, or as a fuel additive or fuel for home heating or industrial use. “The final product will depend on what is most favorable for the customer and their industry,” says Crespo.

In addition to being portable and scalable, Elementum works with separated or mixed plastics. And that is not its only advantage, Crespo explains: “the technology does not require the plastics to be clean, avoiding the use of approximately 5.3 liters of water to recycle one kilo of plastic (zero water footprint).”

From innovation to startup

The road to this technological solution was complex. Crespo acknowledges that the hardest part was being a science- and technology-based startup focused on a physicochemical process rather than on digital, “which is where most startups in Chile and around the world have emerged from.”

“Fortunately, thanks to the Know Hub Ignition program, Elementum has been able to go from being a science- and technology-based innovation to a science- and technology-based startup: we have made our first sales and are optimizing both the initial process and our business model,” says Crespo about the Know Hub Chile program, which supports the creation and maturation of technology-based startups to promote innovation in the country through the transfer of research results for the benefit of society, and in which they were one of the winning teams in 2020.

Since then, they have been part of the corporation’s portfolio, which has accompanied them on their journey as science- and technology-based entrepreneurs. “They developed a plastic recycling system that achieves true circularity, which makes it a venture that applies science and technology to solve a problem that is urgent today not only in Chile but for the rest of the world,” says Javier Ramírez, executive director of Know Hub Chile.

“We are moving from an academic mindset to a scientific-business one, where it is not enough to have a good idea; it must also generate revenue. At the same time, this drives constant improvements in our team as well as in our technology, which allows us to dream of generating revenue through constant innovation, acting as a bridge between academia and science-based business,” adds Crespo.

They are currently running pilots with this technology and adapting it to the needs and types of plastic their customers have. This is the case of Química Maguey, a company that produces cleaning products and whose most-used plastic is high-density polyethylene, “so we are adjusting the process so that, as a by-product of its recycling, it generates a liquid that will be used to produce mechanical maintenance oils, like WD-40,” says Crespo.

Furthermore, given the high demand for plastic and the large volumes discarded every day, they realized that one or several portable units would not be able to meet their goal of increasing the recyclability and reuse of plastics so they do not end up in landfills and oceans. That is why they designed new scaled-up units “with a processing capacity of between 50 and 200 kg/day of plastics,” Crespo says.

Read the full La Tercera article here