The plastics recycling and petrochemical industries working together
Quality Circular Polymers (QCP) is a premium mechanical plastics recycling firm in the Netherlands, owned equally by LyondellBasell (a prominent plastics, chemicals, and refining corporation) and SUEZ (a global leader in resource management).
Pilot amounts of pyrolysis oil made from plastic goods trash supplied by Remondis, a renowned European waste management firm, were employed in BASF’s ChemCycling project for the first time at the year’s end. Customers from a wide range of sectors, including the electronics and packaging film manufacturing industries, participated in the pilot projects.
SABIC, a manufacturer of commodity and high-performance plastics, signed a memorandum of understanding with Plastic Energy, a recycler of chemical plastics, in the same year to secure a reliable supply of feedstock for SABIC’s petrochemical facilities in Europe. To supply the project’s partners (Unilever, Tupperware Brands, Vinventions, and Walki Group), the partnership is exploring the use of recycled feedstock to make polymers that will be verified as having been made from recycled materials.
In 2018, polyolefins, basic chemicals, and fertilizer provider Borealis bought the German plastics recycler MTM Plastics. MTM is a leading European manufacturer of post-consumer polyolefin recyclates and a mechanical recycler of mixed post-consumer plastic trash.
Starting in 2017, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation funded a study called “Project Lodestar,” which was led by Recycling Technologies Ltd., a feedstock recycling company based in the United Kingdom. The economics of an advanced plastics recycling facility (aPRF), which combines mechanical recycling with feedstock recycling, were analyzed as part of Project Lodestar. Based on these findings, it appears that an aPRF can significantly improve recycling rates, reducing waste sent to landfills and incinerators to a mere 5% and boosting revenue by as much as 25% when compared to relying solely on mechanical recycling.
Using a liquid feedstock developed by Atlanta firm Nexus Fuels LLC, the American arm of oil and gas giant Shell said in November 2019 that it has successfully employed pyrolysis to manufacture high-end chemicals from plastic waste at its Louisiana plant.
Meanwhile, in Europe, energy provider Neste has revealed that it will work with recycling firm Remondis to advance chemical plastic waste recycling. The initiative’s partners will prioritize increasing chemical recycling rates and opening the door for other businesses along the value chain to get involved. After announcing its partnership with ReNew ELP, which is bringing the Licella catalytic hydro-thermal recycling process to market, this development is timely. In addition, in March of 2020, Neste invested in Recycling Technologies and agreed to an offtake contract for the output oils, allowing for the construction and installation of the company’s first commercial facility.
Total, a French energy corporation, said in December 2019 that it was collaborating with Recycling Technologies and international food companies Nestlé and Mars on a feasibility study to establish a feedstock recycling plant based on pyrolysis in the country of France. CITEO has enabled a partnership that will assess the economic and technological viability of recycling complex plastic waste in France. This waste includes tiny, flexible, and multilayered packaging for food products.
Models for Doing Business
Several new businesses, at varying levels of development, are entering the chemical recycling market. Across Europe, several demonstration pilot plants are in operation, while others are growing on an industrial scale.
Commercial plants will come in a wide variety of sizes, from massive centralized facilities with 30-200kt annual throughput to small modular distributed units with 3-10,000t annual capacity and mobile facilities with 3-3,000t annual capacity.
Large, centralized recycling facilities are often operated and provided by for-profit businesses. The facility will operate as the waste’s recipient and keep the finished product for resale to the chemical industry.
Waste management companies can obtain recycling technology solutions from companies with a decentralized, smaller plant. In this scenario, the plant will be assembled off-site and shipped to various landfills and recycling centers for eventual installation. The waste handler will keep ownership of the output product for resale to the chemical sector, while the technology provider will profit from equipment sales and maintenance agreements.
Read more: Plastic Waste Management
Recommended Reading
- Research and innovation findings to guide policy and funding decisions: a circular economy for plastics (2019), European Commission
- Accelerating Plastic’s Circular Supply Chains as a Closed-Loop Partner in 2019 A panorama of technologies for change that eliminates plastic waste while keeping materials in circulation and expanding markets.
- Chemical recycling of waste plastics for new material production highlights cutting-edge methods for chemically recycling commercial plastic as well as systems for separating and recycling plastic solid waste into feedstocks. (2017)
- Whitepaper on the mass balance strategy to enable a circular economy for chemicals, co-authored by CE100 and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation The mass balancing technique in the chemical sector is a major step toward achieving a circular economy. ISCC members Eastman and UPM are part of the CE100 Network at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which has published a whitepaper advocating for a mass balancing approach with well-defined guidelines to promote the use of recycled materials (2018).
- Market research into non-mechanical recycling systems is included in WRAP’s Non-Mechanical Recycling of Plastic (October 2019).
