Agilyx, GE to Advance Circular Economy for Plastics

Agilyx Corporation announced a collaboration in artificial intelligence (AI) technology with the General Electric Company (GE) that aims to keep plastic materials from becoming waste.

Combining Agilyx's experience in chemical recycling with GE's experience in the application of industrial AI, the two companies are aiming to increase the chemical recyclability of all post-use plastics from the current 10 percent to more than 95 percent.

This announcement is the result of a year-long effort to assess GE's advanced modeling technology developed by GE Research and its applicability to the database of chemical conversions of post-use plastics that Agilyx has amassed over the last 15 years. Together, the companies can greatly improve recycling rates by deploying an innovative set of AI technologies, including machine learning (ML), predictive modeling (PM) and optimization tools, in combination with other supply chain innovations in partnership with a growing number of diverse leaders in the waste and recycling, petrochemical, consumer goods products and retail industries. Additional information about these relationships will be shared throughout the coming months.

"For over 20 years, I´ve had the opportunity to work at the nexus of innovation in waste management, finding ways to mine valuable resources while developing environmental stewardship. The main challenge to scaling solutions is effectively managing the variability and complexity of the materials and contaminants within diverse waste streams. This is certainly true for plastic feedstocks for chemical recycling technologies," said Joe Vaillancourt, Agilyx's CEO, in a statement. "The Agilyx team has developed deep domain expertise and built the industry´s largest database of chemical recycling characterizations analyzing the relationship between thousands of plastic waste sources, processing parameters and end products. By leveraging GE's expertise in AI, ML and PM, we are deploying a toolset for global use. Consumers can utilize plastic as a valuable renewable resource creating a true circular economy for plastics—a material that we all have come to depend on in our daily lives."

"This collaboration is a wonderful example of how we're connecting GE's vast technology portfolio with world-class industry partners like Agilyx to improve the environment," said Pat Patnode, president of GE Licensing, in a statement. "Armed with GE's digital technologies, Agilyx will add the critical pieces they need to turn plastics into a sustainable, dependable carbon source."

"Across GE's diverse set of industries in aviation, energy and healthcare, we have successfully developed and applied industrial AI and machine learning solutions to create hundreds of millions of dollars in new business value by improving the efficiency and performance of our assets and manufacturing processes," said Colin Parris, vice president of software research for GE Research, in a statement. "Together with Agilyx, we can do the same for the plastics industry by integrating Agilyx's deep industry domain knowledge with our AI, machine learning and modeling techniques to bring recycling almost entirely full circle."