Oxford Sustainable Fuels (OSF), a UK-based recycling technology spinout from University of Oxford, made its public debut yesterday with £1m ($1.4m) in funding from the investment division of China-based waste recycling firm Gem.
The spinout is being launched by Oxford University Innovation (OUI), Oxford’s research and commercialisation arm. It will research low-energy waste recycling technology that could convert surplus plastic, tyres, biomass and other hydrocarbon-based materials into quality transportation fuels and chemicals.
OSF will initially focus on research into pyrolysis, the process by which a synthetic fuel called pyrolysis oil can be extracted from plastics that have decomposed with heat in the absence of oxygen.
The company claims to have designed a process that could purify and upgrade the pyrolysis oil into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. OSF’s technology would complement current recycling methods and be able to process mixed plastics, potentially sparing the need to sort and separate disposed materials.
The approach builds on work by three members of Oxford University’s Department of Inorganic Chemistry; including Peter Edwards, a professor in inorganic chemistry who has completed several papers on materials, and Tiancun Xiao, technical director of the KACST – Oxford Clean Energy Research Centre.
They were helped by Zhaoxi Zhang, a 2nd year DPhil student working in Edwards’s laboratory.
Xiao said: “It is our aim to become a key element of the circular economy by enabling the economic transformation of waste to valuable and needed products…
“We believe this to be a key element in the fight against plastic in the oceans by turning waste into a valued raw material.”
