Polyurethane foam is not regulated as a mandatory waste recycling item in Taiwan. The seat cushions disassembled from automotives are treated together with other automotive shredded residues by incineration, which causes a negative impact to the environment. An effective recycling and regeneration of wasted PU foams toward circular economy is needed. This project develops chemical recycling technology to decompose the PU cushion of the scrap car into polyol, and collecting 19 kinds of scrap car PU cushions from 5 representative car manufacturers (Nissan, Toyota, Ford, Mitsubishi, Honda), 1 cushion from scrap locomotive (Yamaha), 4 defective car cushions, 3 defective locomotive cushion, and ASR PU. Among them, almost 1 or 2 types of PPG are used for the car cushion (Mw 4500-6500 PPG or Mw 4500-6500 with Mw 7000-11000 PPG). The polyol composition of the locomotive is singular, all of them are Mw 4500-6500. Therefore, the PU cushion of the locomotive is easier to chemical recycling than the car. For chemical recycling applications in cars, PPG products with 2 or 3 components must be considered. The optimization of manufacturing process have be conducted by selecting glycolysis agents and catalysis, and by adjusting process parameters. Subsequently, this project adopted the partial glycolysis recycling technology to depolymerize automotive seating PU foams to polyol slurry. All of the recycled polyol slurry can be used for PU re-production without waste generation. The cushions from scrapped locomotive and mixed scrapped car can depolymerize to polyol slurry and successfully apply to the PU foam re-manufacturing (up to 20% reuse ratio). Furthermore, the application of high resilience foam is achieved by cooperating with the foam manufacturer. The construction of the chemical recycling technology is expected to facilitate the refurbish/remanufacture of recycled PU foams.

Polyurethane, Chemical recycling, Reuse