Conference Speakers

John Layman, Ph.D.

Senior Director, Corporate R&D, The Procter & Gamble Company

BIOGRAPHY

John is currently a Senior Director, Corporate R&D at The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) in working to develop sustainable materials. John is also the Chief Technologist and Founding Inventor of PureCycle Technologies; a start-up company that is commercializing a new recycled resin purification technology invented by John in P&G’s corporate research laboratories. He earned his Ph.D. in Macromolecular Science and Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Commonwealth University. 

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Pure Polyolefin Recycling at P&G and Beyond

Consumers increasingly demand sustainable products without performance and price trade-offs, and companies, like P&G, have established long-term sustainability goals that include the use of large percentages of recycled resins in their products and packaging. To satisfy consumers’ expectations and achieve companies’ goals, P&G has developed a novel purification technology that converts contaminated recycled resins into virgin-like resins.

The proprietary technology is based on using a hydrocarbon solvent at elevated temperature and pressure, and a novel combination of standard chemical engineering unit operations. These processes purify the recycled resins via removal of odor, volatile organic chemicals, and other organic and particulate contaminants and additives. Initial focus of the technology has been on polypropylene (PP). The PP purification technology was patented by P&G and licensed to Innventure, which launched PureCycle Technologies (PCT) in September 2015 to commercialize the technology. A 70 ton/year capacity pilot plant started operating in July 2019. A large 50 kt/year plant is planned to start sometime in 21/22. In parallel, purifications of other polymers are currently under development.