Toray announced that it has developed solvent-based material recycling technology to separate and recover PPS from waste materials, enabling the production of recycled PPS with quality equivalent to virgin material, and is aiming for commercial sales by 2030.
Toray announced that it has developed solvent-based material recycling technology to separate and recover PPS from waste materials containing PPS used in automotive parts and electrical and electronic components. The method dissolves PPS while it remains in resin form, rather than breaking it down to the raw-material level, and separates and extracts it from other materials. The company expects this to be the industry's first small-scale demonstration, based on its own research as of September 2026.
Demand for PPS is growing in the automotive and electrical and electronic fields, while the importance of post-consumer recycling is increasing against a backdrop of tighter resource-circulation regulations. At the same time, separating contaminants when recycling PPS from end-of-life products is difficult, making the establishment of recycling technology a challenge.
Toray explained that by selecting and using a solvent that dissolves PPS, it can produce recycled PPS extracted from waste materials while maintaining a molecular weight and melting point equivalent to those of virgin material. Compared with chemical recycling, which breaks materials down to their raw-material level, the method is expected to reduce energy consumption while improving the efficiency of contaminant removal.
Estimates indicate that recycled PPS could potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 30% compared with virgin raw materials. Toray will proceed with demonstration studies to verify the reduction effect, use a subsidy from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to advance scale-up demonstrations, and aim for commercial sales by 2030 while working to build a resource-circulation system.