WPI Center for Resource, Recovery and Recycling receives additional funding

In November, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its “National Recycling Strategy” in support of its goal of achieving a 50 percent recycling rate by the end of the decade. Recycling materials used in manufacturing is an area of focus, as it could help mitigate climate change, increase the sustainability of products and even address future supply chain issues. As part of this effort, the National Science Foundation is providing additional funding to the Center for Resource, Recovery and Recycling (CR³) at Massachusetts-based Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), through the Industry-University Cooperative Research Center Program (IUCRC) Phase III funding.

For more than a decade, the NSF has supported the CR³, which helps create and test new technologies that recover, recycle and reuse materials throughout the manufacturing process. As an NSF IUCRC, CR³ is a multi-university, member-driven collaborative. With partner sites at the Colorado School of Mines and KU Leuven, Belgium, CR³ offers companies opportunities to work with a diverse group of people from industry and academia to improve and innovate processes, materials and/or devices to address industrial or societal needs, according to a news release form WPI. Those needs are developed into projects primarily related to conserving resources through reduction, reuse and recycling of byproducts from manufacturing and society.

“From initial product design through manufacture to end-of-life disposal, these advancements have helped many diverse businesses reduce energy costs to increase profitability while protecting the world’s natural resources for future generations,” says Brajendra Mishra, Kenneth G. Merriam Professor of mechanical engineering at WPI and CR³ director.

CR³ initially was funded by the NSF in 2010 with a five-year, $400,000 award. In 2015, CR³ received a five-year Phase II Collaborative Research Award to continue its work with companies such as Aurubis, Boliden, Campine, East Penn, Glencore and Gopher, in addition to its founding members, GM and Umicore. These companies pay annual membership fees to work with teams composed of faculty, postdoctoral fellows and doctoral students at WPI and partner universities to complete this research under their close supervision.   

In the past 10 years, CR³ has completed more than 37 projects, resulting in 14 provisional and full patents, WPI says. The most recent patent applied for stemmed from project work originally suggested by General Motors to recycle paint sludge. 

CR^3’‘s technology transfer also has spawned spin-off companies such as Kinetic Batteries LLC, Battery Resourcers LLC, Solvus Global LLC and Global Mineral Recovery. 

With NSF’s continued support through the Phase III grant, WPI says CR³ looks to expand its industry and government partners and the scope of its work in fields such as materials processing, biotechnology, fuel cells and nanotechnology. WPI says CR³ also plans to research novel technologies and techniques to recycle plastics.