Asahi Glass Co., Ltd. and Nittetsu
chemical engineering Ltd. have successfully
pioneered the first practical application technology for breaking down
and
recycling used fluorinated resin in order to reuse the material. The
break decomposition/
recycling plant operation launch within the Asahi
Glass Chiba Plant (Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture,
Japan) is scheduled to
take place this coming June.
Asahi Glass will mainly collect used fluorinated resin left over from
the manufacturing processes in its plant, and then expand the scale of
the decomposition/recycling plant to break down and treat used
fluorinated resin collected from its customers.
Fluorinated resin is used as an insulation material for heat-resistant
electric
cables/wires, as well as in the manufacture of
semiconductors
and electronic components. However, because of the difficulty in
handling the
gas generated in the thermal
Decomposition process,
fluorinated resin has been considered extremely difficult to recycle,
and when deemed as non-recyclable it has been treated as industrial
waste.
Asahi Glass feels the responsibility as a fluorinated resin manufacturer
to solve this problem and has been studying technology for recycling
used fluorinated resin since 2001. Asahi Glass has successfully
developed materials for decomposition equipment in collaboration with
Nittetsu Chemical Engineering, from which the practical applications for
the technology emerged. In the new process, collected fluorinated resin
is broken down into
calcium fluoride, extracted and then recompounded to
produce fluorinated resin.