ACES profile: Enval targets the unrecyclable

When Carlos Ludlow started his PhD at Cambridge University he’d never heard of microwave-induced pyrolysis. But he quickly jumped into a project using that technology, led by Professor Howard Chase, because he wanted to study environmental engineering.

His interest led Ludlow to successfully apply the process to solve the particularly delicate waste management problem of how to dispose of plastic/aluminium packaging.

This form of packaging obviously has great benefits in terms of preserving food and drink, and making these commodities much easier and cheaper to handle and transport. But until Ludlow took the problem in hand, there was no recycling method to reliably separate the plastic from the aluminium, and the existing disposal methods – of incineration or landfill – were clearly unsustainable.

To date, Enval’s financing has come in two rounds, one at the end of 2006 and one at the beginning of 2009. The investors are the East of England Co-Investment Fund; two angel investment groups - the Cambridge Angels and Cambridge Capital Group; Cambridge University’s Cambridge Seed Fund; and GEIF Ventures (Great Eastern Investment Forum). The company has also had funding from the East of England Development Agency for specific projects, and a small (undisclosed) amount of corporate funding.

In all, this amounts to over £800,000 in private investment and £200,000 in grants, enabling the company to set up a pilot plant in Luton, UK, and paving the way for Ludlow and Chase to win the Science|Business Academic Enterprise Awards (ACES) in the Materials/Chemistry category at a ceremony held at ETH Zurich in February.

The company has also benefitted from the UK’s massive push from 2000 - 2010 to improve its lamentable recycling rates. “The UK is a good place to be now in terms of attracting attention, and investors listening to me,” Ludlow said. At the turn of the century, European companies were hit with regulations forcing them to pay more attention to the amount of packaging that they were putting into the market, he added. “The European packaging regulations translate into various national laws in the EU. All of this will definitely help Enval to grow in the future.”

In Europe alone, Enval’s process could be used to treat an estimated two million tonnes of waste annually, that otherwise would go to a landfill. The judges were impressed both by the company’s technology and its large commercial potential.

Looking for ‘unrecyclable’ waste

“I wanted to do something in the real world with real waste,” said Ludlow, 38, who along with his PhD in chemical engineering from Cambridge University has an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. He had used a lot of plastic pellets in his experiments, but they typically don’t cause an issue in recycling. “I looked for waste in modern life that wasn’t being recycled.”

He first considered blister packs from pharmaceutical companies that have a plastic encasement and an aluminum backing through which to push the pill. But the PVC (poly vinyl chloride) content creates fumes during recycling, and his lab wasn’t prepared to deal with them. But that got him interested in the plastic/aluminum laminates that are in widespread use in food and drink cartons, coffee bags, pouches for pet food, toothpaste and cosmetics tubes.

“These are cheap and light. If you have a big truck with glass bottles and liquid, 40 per cent of it is packaging and 60 per cent is liquid, whereas the same truck carrying pouches will have 5 per cent packaging and 95 per cent product by weight. So this saves lots of resources and money for transportation,” Ludlow said. “This material is very good in many ways, but it couldn’t be recycled. The process I am working with is pretty good to recycle this material, and extract and sell aluminium and oil from plastics.”

Compared to incineration, the process avoids production of greenhouse gases or toxic emissions, the company claims. Molecules that form the recycling material start degrading without oxygen under heat. “Plastic is a long-chain polymer, so when you apply heat it breaks down,” Ludlow explained. “It is depolymerised into small compounds so you can create a type of oil. It is not exactly like crude oil from the ground, but you can use it for heating ovens or furnaces, or for ships, or as a chemical feedstock for refineries.” There is also 100 per cent recovery of the aluminium in a form that is ready for reuse without further processing.

If you build it, they will come

The pilot plant has been running in Luton, north of London, for almost two years and having learnt from this Enval now needs more money to build a commercial-scale plant to attract waste handlers, the ultimate customers.

“We need to demonstrate the process can be viable on a commercial scale,” said Ludlow. But Enval is taking an unusual path toward funding that showcase operation. Rather than going directly to the waste handlers, who first need to be convinced the plant will operate as promised, he is approaching the goods makers who use the packaging.

“We want to link with interested parties rather than potential customers. So we’ve talked to people with vested interests in laminates such as large multinational corporations and consumer goods companies that use laminates,” he said. “They are very interested in a process that recycles these things.”

Enval is suggesting that prospective partners share the cost of the first commercial plant to showcase it to waste handlers. They won’t get an immediate return on investment, but could benefit in the future if the plant goes forward.

The company also is visiting waste handlers to ask if they want to put the showcase plant on their site. “We have three to four possibilities. We haven’t decided where to put it yet, but it will be in the UK,” Ludlow said.

Ludlow said he hadn’t expected to run the business himself after he prepared a full business plan. “But this is a good opportunity financially and environmentally. The plan looked good and I said to Professor Chase, ‘why don’t we do it and try to get money from investors? Why not?’” said Ludlow, who serves as managing director and chief technology officer.