Lein Tange, ICL-IP and EFRA, presented the “Polystyrene Loop” project. End-of-life polystyrene insulating materials containing the brominated flame retardant HBCD (previously very widely used in building and construction materials, but, but now regulated, and in particular effectively banned from recycling from March 2016 by the EU POPs Regulation EC 850/2004) will be recycled.
The recovered foam will be dissolved using the Creasolve process (using an environmentally preferable, non-toxic solvent), at the industrial site which in the past produced HBCD (Terneuen, The Netherlands), to recover the bromine and a clean extract which can be used as feedstock for production of new brominated polymer in the same application (B&C), a recycled polymeric flame retardant. Construction of a demonstration-scale plant is planned for 2018.