Catalaix

Catalaix – Catalysis for a Circular Economy

Duration:          2024 – 2034 

Funding:     Werner Siemens Foundation

Project partners: Network of interdisciplinary researchers at RWTH Aachen University and Forschungszentrum Jülich

Project:

Technologies for the sustainable use of resources

To date, there are no viable recycling concepts to deal with the steadily growing amounts of plastic waste at the end of their life cycles. Given the increasing quantities of end-of-life plastic waste, it is crucial to develop sustainable recycling concepts. Currently, plastics are often thermally recovered or landfilled, which has significant environmental impacts.

Against this background, the WSS research center catalaix is dedicated to developing innovative catalytic recycling processes to transform the chemical industry into a multidimensional circular economy. An interdisciplinary team from 17 groups at RWTH Aachen University and the Forschungszentrum Jülich is working on using tailor-made catalysts to convert plastic waste into new raw materials for a sustainable chemical industry. With the approach of the "open-loop principle", high-quality molecular building blocks are recovered, that can be flexibly integrated as feedstock into various existing value chains and material cycles, using renewable carbon sources and renewable energy. This approach will transform today's waste into valuable raw materials for future value creation scenarios and replace existing linear production and usage structures.

From the very beginning, the team has kept an eye on the application of its processes. Not only are the individual molecules and materials, including their constituents, investigated, but also manufacturing processes as well as the economic and logistical systems in which plastics exist. Researchers in process engineering are responsible for assessing early on whether catalysis can be integrated into an industrial process or what material balance and energy requirements look like. Researchers in sustainability and system assessment evaluate which newly created molecules could be sustainable and in demand on the market. After all, catalaix aims to pave the way for a sustainable chemical industry.

Here you can find more information about the WSS research centre catalaix.