Grants support $2.75 million effort to develop advanced recycling technologies

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo is leading a $2.75 million effort to develop advanced recycling technologies.

“We are conducting research to develop technologies that directly address pressing environmental challenges and help enable a circular economy,” says Amit Goyal, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

The funding includes a new $750,000 grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to UB for investigating uses of discarded tires, as well as a $1 million grant awarded by the REMADE Institute to UB in February for further developing advanced sorting technologies. The latter project includes a $1 million cost-share match from UB.

Goyal serves as principal investigator for both awards.

Developing waste tire applications

The DEC grant will fund research and development on new applications for discarded tires.

“This project will develop new, high-value applications of waste tires which are critically needed with the ever-growing number of end-of-life tires, now estimated to be around 19 million per year for New York State and 1 billion per year worldwide," says Goyal. 

UB co-investigators include John Atkinson, PhD, associate professor and Scott and Coleen Stevens Chair in Engineering Sustainability in the Department of Civil Structural and Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering; and Thomas Thundat, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor in Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the UB RENEW Institute.

The project will begin this fall.

Advanced sorting technologies testbed

The REMADE Institute is a public-private partnership funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies. Its award to UB supports the development of highly-accurate, high-speed and cost-effective techniques for sorting plastics to improve recycling and help enable a circular economy.

UB co-investigators include Thundat, and Karthik Dantu, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

“This project will establish a mini-MRF [Materials Recovery Facility] testbed and develop and showcase three, newly developed, advanced, cost-effective sorting technologies that can operate at high-speeds. While hyperspectral cameras for sorting plastics and textiles coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been around for almost a decade, these have not been adopted due the prohibitively high cost of the hyperspectral cameras. This project aims to develop advanced sorting technologies coupled with cutting-edge AI and ML that will be able to sort plastics – and also textiles – at a fraction of the cost with a view towards industry adoption and use,” says Goyal.

Additional UB investigators include Kunal Singh, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, who will help develop the advanced sorting technologies and build the mini-MRF; and Charuvahan Adhivarahan, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, who will help lead AI and ML analysis.

Investigators began work on the project during the first quarter of 2025.

Since joining UB in 2015, Goyal, a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), has served as principal investigator on multiple, externally funded grants totaling roughly $14 million (with all funds staying at UB or with no external subcontracts). He serves as principal investigator and director of the New York State Center for Plastics Recycling Research & Innovation at UB, funded with a $4.5 million DEC grant. Goyal was the founding director of UB’s RENEW Institute, serving as director from January 2015 to July 2021. Goyal received the University at Buffalo’s President’s Medal in recognition of extraordinary service to the university in 2019.