Pyrowave, a Montreal-based company with operation in Ontario, is among the TOP 10 projects in the Startup category of 2017’s GreenTec Awards, the worldwide biggest environmental and business prize. The company is looking for online support to vote online for his project at this link from November 28, 2016 until January 6, 2017! Your vote can influence the selection process since the project that receives most votes in the online voting automatically qualifies as one of the three nominees of its category.
Pyrowave joined Altitude Accelerator (RICC) in 2015. RICC has provided key information about the cleantech market and helped the company structure its business model to make it competitive and attractive through a strong value proposition for its clients. “The Altitude Accelerator provided useful resources and intelligence to give us the confidence needed to reach our customers and attract capital”, says Jocelyn Doucet, CEO of Pyrowave. “Their value add comes from their network of highly qualified Entrepreneurs-In-Residence who understand the market and the reality of raising funds”.
Pyrowave’s unique technology recovers monomers and wax that are then re-used to make new polymers and packaging. “With this technology, it is finally possible to close the plastic loop and become more efficient with our resources,” says Jocelyn Doucet, CEO of Pyrowave. “After more than 6 years of work, our technology is now functional and proven at commercial scale. Our technology draws attention from the entire petrochemical industry because it solves one of their central problems. While more than 50% of plastics manufactured today are used for packaging, it is very difficult to introduce recycled plastics in packaging applications and fully reach our goals of recycling. With our technology, this is possible, while also being profitable and environmentally-friendly “.
The company has signed commercial agreements, including one with one of the world’s largest plastics producer that believes in this new approach of chemical recycling. The uniqueness of Pyrowave’s approach lies in its distributed model by deploying several small units in different locations. Having small equipment modules installed at different sites reduces handling of the raw material and facilitates the treatment. Using microwaves to decompose plastics also offers extraordinary possibilities by generating high quantity of high value-added products that are then re-used directly into plastics production. The industry can then make recycled plastics by using recycled chemicals without changing their original process. This approach using recycled chemicals reduces the environmental emissions by avoiding the production of new chemicals from crude oil.
The company received support from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and the Technoclimat (MERN) greenhouse gas reduction program for the demonstration of its technology. The company plans to start sending concentrated monomer from its Salaberry-de-Valleyfield demonstration site in the spring of 2017 and start deploying its conversion modules by the summer.
About the Greentec Award
The GreenTec Awards were founded in 2008 by the engineers Marco Voigt and Sven Krüger. The GreenTec Awards offer a stage to innovative green projects and products that lead the way towards a more eco-friendly future. Among the applicants for the highly coveted environmental award are established major enterprises as well as numerous young heads with innovative ideas. Well-established media partners like ProSieben or FAZ support the awards. With the special prizes Start-up or Galileo Wissenspreis, they specifically want to encourage small and newly founded companies or private persons and their green projects.
The presence of numerous famous guests on the gala’s green carpet annually ensures far-reaching media coverage. The extensive media attention helps the GreenTec Awards to put green innovations and projects into the spotlight and thus contributes to a more environmentally friendly future.
