Synthesis and assessment of waste-to-resource routes for circular economy

Abstract

The benefits of the circular economy have been proven during the past two decades, but its application poses some challenges. In particular, the increasing number of potential waste-to-resource processing alternatives obstructs the identification of the most promising ones, besides the lack of efficient knowledge management tools and standardized assessment procedures. This contribution presents a systematic way to generate and assess new processing paths including waste-to-resource technologies, based on the use of a predefined ontological framework. An ontology is filled with transformation processes; then, several alternative paths are generated and assessed, according to a potentially available waste. The resulting list is classified according to pre-established parameters, thus presenting which are the potentially best alternatives to close the material loops and recover chemical resources. The proposed method is tested through the generation and evaluation of different routes for the treatment of plastic waste materials, with a special focus on chemical recycling.