INDUSTRY
What’s new in chemical recycling projects
The chemical recycling industry continues to be very active in construction, with progress made in pilot and production projects and the launch of major new investments.
Spurred by regulatory pressure and sustainability targets, the sheer number of chemical recycling projects entering the planning and development stages was evident in 2021 and continued through 2022. What follows is a round-up of recent devel- opments around the world. At the start of 2022, Plastic Energy announced its intention to build a second chemical recycling plant in Sevilla, Spain, which will transform end-of- life plastic waste into a feedstock called Tacoil using its patented recycling technology based on pyrolysis. TotalEnergies will use this feedstock to produce virgin-quality polymers. The new plant will process up to 33,000 tonnes/yr and is expected to be operational in early 2025. In what proved to be a busy period for the French oil and energy company, shortly afterwards TotalEn- ergies entered into a commercial agreement with New Hope Energy under which the US company would build a pyrolysis plant in Texas to transform end-of-life plastic waste into feedstock. TotalEner- gies has committed to purchase 100,000 tons/year of output. The plant is due to start operations in 2025. New Hope Energy’s first plant, which has been operating in Tyler, Texas, since 2018, is currently undergoing an expansion which would make it the largest pyrolysis facility in the world. In January, plastic feedstock management
company Cyclyx (a consortium led by Agilyx) signed an agreement with ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell to develop a new $100m plastic waste sorting and processing facility in the Greater Houston area dubbed the Cyclyx Circularity Centre. The plant will
Chemical Recycling – Global Insight 2023
produce feedstock for both mechanical and chemi- cal recycling, and also use new and emerging technologies to analyse plastics based on their composition and sort them according to customer specifications. Engineering work has already begun with commercial start-up expected in 2024. Pure Cycle Technologies received a financial
boost after it made a $250m private placement of common stock and warrants to shareholders in March and welcomed new investor SK Geo Centric, which will support construction of its solvent-based PP recycling facility in Augusta, Georgia, US. Eastman announced in January it was planning to invest up to $1bn in a material-to-material molecular recycling facility in France using its polyester renewal technology. The multi-phase project would include units to prepare mixed plastic waste for processing, a methanolysis unit to depoly- merise it, and polymer lines to create a variety of materials for specialty, packaging, and textile applications. The plant, along with a new innovation centre, is expected to be operational by 2025. In a significant development for chemical
recycling in Asia, Agilyx and Toyo Styrene an- nounced they would be entering into the construc- tion phase of a large-scale project in Japan. Using Agilyx’s depolymerisation technology, the plant will convert post-use polystyrene into styrene monomer purified using Toyo’s proprietary purification process. The monomer produced can then be converted into high value polystyrene products. LG Chem made a sizeable equity investment in Mura, which in 2021 announced a high-profile
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Main image: TotalEnergies has production projects with partners in Europe and USA
IMAGE: TOTALENERGIES
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