Agilyx collaborates with Japanese company

Portland, Oregon-based Agilyx Corp., a company focused on chemically recycling postuse plastics back into polymers, chemicals and low carbon fuels, has announced that it has licensed its technology to Japan-based Toyo Styrene Co. Ltd., an affiliate of Denka Company Ltd. 

According to a news release from Agilyx, the site technology license agreement enables Toyo Styrene to deploy the Agilyx technology near Toyo Styrene’s facility in the Chiba Prefecture of Japan. The facility will focus on recycling postuse polystyrene (PS) back to styrene monomer.

Joe Vaillancourt, CEO of Agilyx, says this marks the company’s first entrance to Asian markets to deliver recycling options for plastics. 

“We are excited to be working with a group that shares our mission of reducing the impact on the global environment by increasing recycled content in new products while reducing the dependency on virgin material. Toyo Styrene has been a leader in developing eco-friendly products for the efficient use of plastics,” he says.

“I am pleased with announcing the license agreement with Agilyx, which has the unique pyrolysis technology for used polystyrene into styrene monomer,” says Sanshiro Matsushita, president of Toyo Styrene. “This is the very beginning for true circular economy society in Japan. We will enhance the chemical recycling for PS by making use of the characteristics that PS is relatively easier to be depolymerized to [styrene monomer] than other plastics. We will achieve that recycled ‘refreshed’ PS is able to use for PS food containers with no problem with both quality and safety.”

Agilyx and Toyo Styrene plan to begin engineering and development of the facility immediately. The state-of-the-art depolymerization plant will have a processing capacity of up to 10 tons per day of postuse PS. Toyo Styrene will purify the styrene monomer oil produced from the technology into a high-purified styrene monomer using their proprietary purification technology. The facility is expected to commence operations in early in 2022.