ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,378,384, issued on Aug. 5, was assigned to Poseidon Plastics Ltd. (Redcar, Great Britain).
"Polymer recycling" was invented by Martin Atkins (Redcar, Great Britain) and Nicholas Curry (Redcar, Great Britain).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to produce bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET) comprises the steps of (a) depolymerising PET in the presence of ethylene glycol and a catalyst system in a series of preferably two depolymerisation reactors to form a depolymerised mixture comprising BHET; (b) crystallising a precipitate comprising BHET from the depolymerised mixture; (c) dissolvi...