Development of Technological Information Infrastructure for the Plastics Recycling System

Yuji Naka* and Takashi Kagiyama**
* Frontier Collaborative Research Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology
** Japan Chemical Innovation Institute
+ Correspondence should be addressed to Yuji Naka:
(4259 Nagatsuta Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8503 Japan)

Abstract
It is very difficult to evaluate the structure and the management of product lifecycle systems because a product lifecycle system consists of heterogeneous industrial sectors.
A new project to establish the technological information infrastructure for the plastics recycling system has been started. The technological information infrastructure is defined as an engineering environment based on which logistics, designs, and operations of recycling processes are evaluated from various viewpoints such as technology elements and LCA.
We employed the PET bottles recycling system as a benchmark problem and describe the status of lifecycle inventory data, which is one evaluation criteria, and also point out foreseen logistic and quality problems of the chemical recycling system.

Key words: plastic, technological information infrastructure, product lifecycle system, LCA, chemical recycle system