Chemical recycling from JEPLAN to boost circularity for metal recovery

Tanaka Precious Metals Group announced a new business partnership with JEPLAN that aims to drastically reduce carbon emissions from its metal recovery operations and establish a new circular system for plastics. The partnership will tap on both’s experience, with Tanaka’s expertise in precious metal recycling and JEPLAN’s advanced chemical recycling technology.

Tanaka Precious Metals has long been a player in recycling rare and valuable metals in Japan. One of the key challenges they face is the recovery of metals from industrial waste such as plastic syringes and wipes. Conventional methods involve incinerating these organic materials to burn them away, leaving the precious metals behind in the ash for collection. While effective for metal recovery, this process releases large amounts of carbon dioxide.

The new partnership will leverage on JEPLAN’s chemical recycling technology into the recovery process. JEPLAN possesses a proprietary technology that breaks down plastics to a molecular level, allowing them to be re-formed into materials of a quality comparable to virgin plastics.

Under the proposed system, plastic waste containing precious metals will be processed using this technology. This will enable the separation and recovery of the metals while converting the plastic (which was previously incinerated) into a reusable raw material. According to Tanaka Precious Metals Group, this new process is expected to reduce CO2 emissions from the targeted recovery operations to approximately 10% of current levels.