Teesside HydroPRS plant set to recycle all plastics

The HydroPRS (Hydrothermal Plastic Recycling Solution) process, which utilises Cat-HTR  technology, aims to provide a global solution to the growing issue of plastic pollution.

Promising to tackle types of plastic that are currently considered ‘unrecyclable’— such as multi-layer and flexible films, pots and tubs used for packaging food — the process is designed to work alongside conventional recycling methods as well as efforts to reduce and reuse plastic, aiming to push toward a sustainable circular economy.

“The solution is based on supercritical water, and that’s very different to what almost everyone else is doing in the industry: most of it is pyrolysis and gasification,” said Dr Steve Mahon, CEO of Mura Technology. “The technology is fourteen years old, it’s been developed over multiple scale-ups in Australia and it was developed initially for brown coal.” 

Mahon explained that around seven years ago, he raised the idea of using the technology on plastics. The HydroPRS system uses supercritical steam to convert plastics back into the oils and chemicals they were originally made from, allowing them to be used for new virgin-grade plastic products with no limit to the number of times the same material can be recycled.