Plastics2Olefins

Recycling plastic waste into high-value materials- Closing the Loop

The EU-funded Plastics2Olefins aims to demonstrate a novel plastics recycling process based on high-temperature pyrolysis, as the main product will be a gas stream instead of a liquid, so it will reduce the lifecycle GHG emissions by more than 70% compared to existing plastics recycling processes for unsorted plastic waste. The project will realise this in a two-step approach: first by adapting and testing a scaled pilot plant to optimise the components and process conditions and finally by a pioneering full-scale industrial demonstration plant at Repsol’s petrochemical site. To optimise the carbon footprint of such a plant, the project will design and construct a plant that will be fully electrified by renewably generated electricity.

Globally, 359 million metric tons of plastic were produced in 2018, and Europe produced 17% of this amount. In the same year, 29.1 million tons of plastic waste were generated in the EU, and only a third was recycled. While sorted and pure plastic waste can be recycled relatively well, a major problem is recycling of unsorted waste, which still holds a large share of valuable carbon feedstock but is currently either landfilled or energetically valorised, i.e. incinerated, both producing greenhouse gas emissions instead of recovering the precious carbon feedstock contained. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop new technologies that can not only valorise unsorted plastic but also other waste in large amounts to yield material streams that can replace fossil material streams. One promising technology to recycle unsorted heterogeneous plastic waste is pyrolysis. While the low- to medium-temperature pyrolysis (400 °C) produces mainly liquid oil that needs to be fed into the furnace of the steam cracker unit (at higher temperatures than 900 °C) to produce olefins, with our proposal, at high-temperature pyrolysis (<850 °C), syngas stream (light olefins-rich) is fostered and could be integrated downstream the furnace of the steam cracker. However, the use of high-temperature pyrolysis for plastic waste recycling has not yet become an industrial practice, since gas treatment and integration present a great challenge.
Plastics2Olefins project will address this challenge – it will design, build and run a demonstration plant for recycling of unsorted plastic waste at Repsol’s plant Puertollano (Spain), which will be digitalised and run on 100% renewable (electric) energy.
The project estimates to reduce the lifecycle GHG emissions by 70 – 80% compared to incineration and existing plastics recycling processes, providing an important contribution to the EU reaching climate neutrality by 2050, and set a pathway for commercialisation of renewable plastic feedstock replacing fossil fuels.