The Pace Of Global Investment in Waste Plastics Chemical Recovery Technology Is Accelerating.

Recently, the pace of global investment in chemical recycling technology of waste plastics has been accelerating. The past few months have seen a series of announcements related to capital projects, development partnerships and supply agreements, with commercial-scale processing facilities being built on a global scale.

Pyrolytic oil facilities mushroomed

In many plastic chemical recovery technologies, the pyrolysis process has always occupied the leading position. Pyrolytic oil production facilities in Europe and the US have mushroomed on both sides of the Atlantic in recent months.

In May, Total announced it had signed a contract with Texas-based New Hope Energy to receive 100,000 tons of pyrolytic oil per year for recycling plastics production at its Taylor, Texas, plant. New Hope Energy has been operating its Trinity Oak pyrolysis plant in Tyler since 2018 and signed a multi-year supply contract with Dow in January 2022. To support the new contracts, New Hope energy is planning to expand the Trinity Oak pyrolysis plant to 16,000 tPA by the end of 2022 and 156,000 tPA by 2025.

Currently, New Hope has partnered with Loomis Technologies to license the technology. Loomis' new subsidiary, Green Circle, has combined New Hope's pyrolysis technology with Chevron Loomis' isoconversion technology and Loomis' steam cracking technology to produce an integrated technology package of polymer-grade ethylene, polymer-grade propylene and butadiene from a blend of waste plastics.

In addition, BP has a 10-year off-take agreement for naphtha with Clean Planet. Under the deal, BP will receive the first batch of recycled petrochemical feedstock and ultra-low sulphur diesel from clean Planet's 20,000-tonne/year pyrolysis plant on Teesside. BP will also be able to obtain these products through Clean Planet's plants outside Teesside in the future. Clean Planet says it plans to build up to 12 plants around the world.

Other companies are building such industrial-scale projects as demand for pyrolytic oil increases. In May, Xycle, a joint venture between Royal Voeborg, NoWIT and Patpert Teknow Systems, announced plans to start construction of a 20,000-ton/year pyrolysis plant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, by the end of 2022, with operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2023. Xycle says its ultimate goal is to build and operate pyrolysis capacity of 80,000 to 100,000 tons per year.

In April, Houston-based Freepoint Eco Systems announced that it will go ahead with construction of a plastic waste pyrolysis plant in Hebron, Ohio, with a capacity of about 90,000 tons per year. The facility is expected to be completed by 2023. In October 2021, Freepoint announced that it would partner with Total Energy and Plastic Energy to build a 33,000-ton/year pyrolysis plant in Texas, which is scheduled to start production in mid-2024. In addition, total Energy, in partnership with Plastic Energy, plans to build a 15,000-ton/year conversion plant at the Grangpi petrochemical complex in France next year. They are also building a 33,000-ton/year pyrolysis facility in Seville, Spain, which will be operational in early 2025.

Encina Development Group, based in the Woodlands, Texas, announced plans in April to invest $1.1 billion to design a 450,000 tPA aromatics capacity using the company's proprietary plastic fluid catalytic cracking process. Encina expects the facility to be fully operational by fall 2024.

Synthetic resin recycling projects are flocking to France

Recently, new projects related to synthetic resin recycling technology have also been developed, four of which are polyethylene terephthalate (PET) projects, all located in France.

Eastman in January announced the construction of a $1 billion facility in France's Port Jerome sur-Seine that will use the company's alcoholysis polyester recycling technology and is scheduled to start production in 2025. By then, the plant will be able to produce 160,000 tons/year of fresh PET resin using waste PET without using mechanical recycling methods. Canada's Loop Industries also announced plans to form a $285 million joint venture with Suez in France, scheduled to be operational in 2024-2025.

Carbios of France and Indolama of Thailand announced in February that they plan to build a recycling facility based on Carbios biorecovery technology at their Indolama plant in Longravel, France. When it goes into production in 2025, the project will be able to recover 50,000 tons of PET resin per year. In May, Axens announced a partnership with Toray Industries to build an 80,000 tPA recycling plant in Saint-Maurice de Benoust, France, using PET depolymerization technology from Axens glycolysis combined with Toray's polymerization technology. The project is currently in the engineering design phase and the partner is aiming to launch its first 30,000 mt/y unit by the end of 2025.

Intensive construction of new plastic degradation and recycling plants

In plastic degradation recycling, a number of enterprises are also in intensive construction of new plants. In terms of polystyrene (PS), which is traditionally considered extremely difficult to recycle, ineos announced in November 2021 that it was partnering with UK Recycling Technology to build a PS recycling pilot plant in Swindon, UK, which will be completed in the second half of 2022 and will be the first advanced polystyrene recycling facility in Europe. In February 2022, Jubilee announced plans to build a 15,000-ton/year polystyrene recycling plant in Tysondelot, Belgium, with construction starting at the end of this year. Toyo Styrene announced in February that it plans to invest $33 million to build a 3,000-ton/year PS recycling unit using Agilyx technology in Chiba, Japan, which will be put into operation in the second half of 2023. Agilyx and Kumho Petrochemical are considering building a PS recycling facility in South Korea, according to an announcement in August last year. In addition, Agilyx announced last September that its patented plastic degradation technology had been extended to depolymerize all waste plastics. In February 2022, the company announced a strategic partnership with Virgin Group to develop a low-carbon fuel production facility using a mix of plastic waste.

PureCycle Technologies, an American recycling company, has developed a solvent-based polypropylene waste purification process. The company announced in March that it had broken ground on a second plant in Georgia. The company expects to build two purification lines with a total capacity of 118,000 tPA by the fourth quarter of 2023, with six more likely to follow. Production of polypropylene plastic pellets will begin at the company's first purification facility in Ironton, Ohio, in late 2022. Cyclyx International is a consortium of plastics recycling materials formed by Agilyx and ExxonMobil.