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GE Technology licenses Honeywell’s advanced recycling technology for facility in South Korea

| By Mary Bailey

Honeywell International, Inc. (Charlotte, N.C.) announced that GE Technology will license Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology at their planned advanced recycling facility in South Korea. The plant will be able to convert mixed waste plastics into Honeywell Recycled Polymer Feedstock (RPF), which will then be used to create new plastics, and help enable the development of a circular economy for plastics.

Production is anticipated to begin in 2025 and is projected to be the first commercialized waste plastics recycling facility to use Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology in Korea. The planned advanced recycling plant is expected to have the capacity to transform 30,000 metric tons of mixed waste plastics into Honeywell RPF per year.

“Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology not only allows us to reduce waste by expanding the types of plastics that can be recycled, but also displaces the need for fossil fuels in the creation of virgin plastics,” said Woo-Hyun Shim, vice president, GE Technology. “Enabling a circular economy for plastics in Korea is now possible through our licensure with Honeywell and their UpCycle Process Technology.”

Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology is a ready-now technology that utilizes molecular conversion, pyrolysis, and contaminants management technology to convert waste plastic to Honeywell RPF, which is then used to create new plastics. The UpCycle Process Technology expands the types of plastics that can be recycled to include waste plastic that would otherwise go unrecycled, including colored, flexible, multilayered packaging, and polystyrene. When used in conjunction with other chemical and mechanical recycling processes – along with improvements to collection and sorting – Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology has the potential to help recycle nearly 90 percent of waste plastics. This would represent a considerable increase in the amount of waste plastics that can be turned into polymer feedstock1,2.

“GE Technology is the first company in Korea to license Honeywell’s UpCycle Process Technology, which will build upon GE Technology’s existing capability in waste collection and mechanical recycling,” said Barry Glickman, vice president and general manager, Honeywell Sustainable Technology Solutions. “Honeywell’s technology can play a key role in driving a circular plastics economy to tackle the global challenge of plastic waste.”

This announcement expands the UpCycle Process Technology footprint, building on Honeywell’s recent announcements in the U.S., Spain, Turkey, China, and Egypt.