Expanded polystyrene is widely used as packaging for foodstuffs and for shipping. Several hundred thousand tonnes of polystyrene are sent unnecessarily to landfill every year in the UK and Europe, where it does not biodegrade but persists for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, oil-derived feedstocks are being consumed in the production of new polystyrene. Recycling systems for polystyrene are underdeveloped compared to those in existence for many other plastics, owing to the unfavourable economics of collecting and recycling low density material.The proposed project will develop a new process by which an environmentally friendlyand selective solvent is used to dissolve and recycle polystyrene waste into a highpurityproduct comparable to virgin material. A novel thermoplastic recovery systemwill be developed and integrated within a modular, scalable recycling process. This willfacilitate:• Reduced pressure on oil feedstocks for virgin polystyrene production• High value-added product manufactured from effectively zero-value waste, tobe sold by the end userThe technology will build on the success already achieved under the UK TSB-funded“HiPerPol” project, whereby solvent-based systems have been developed for theselective separation of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene (PE) from mixedplastic waste streams. The extension of the technology to polystyrene andpolycarbonate will greatly increase the capability of this technology to deal with thehigh volumes of mixed polymer waste, whereby individual polymers can be separatedand recycled at a far higher degree of purity (and consequently value) than iscurrently possible.The process can also be extended to other thermoplastics.