OVERVIEW
Chemical recycling issues, such as feedstock availability, echo some of those in mechanical recycling. Silke Einschuetz, author of AMI Consulting’s Chemical Recycling Global Status 2022 report, writes about the challenges for the industry
An assessment of the industry’s challenges
Mechanical recycling of plastics has recorded significant growth over the past years, but it comes with technical and legal limitations especially where more highly contaminated material streams are concerned. In particular: l it has limitations regarding the types of polymers and formats it can process (for example, flexible films, multilayer structures);
l the quality of the polymer deteriorates with each recycling cycle leading to losses in material properties and build-up of additives and other contaminants;
l legal frameworks do at present put strict limita- tions on the mechanical recycling of materials to be used for food contact applications. In addition, it is becoming increasingly clear that the volumes of recyclate required because of legislative targets and voluntary brand commit- ments cannot be delivered by mechanical recycling alone within the given time frame. Chemical recycling is thus considered as a
Chemical Recycling – Global Insight 2023
complementary technology to mechanical recy- cling to meet legislative targets and voluntary pledges, and to accelerate the transformation to a more circular economic model. It enables the recycling of plastic materials that cannot currently be mechanically recycled, including contaminated, multi-layer and mixed plastics, and some food contact materials. Based on AMI’s research, global installed input capacity for chemical recycling in 2022 was 1.2m tonnes, forecast to increase to 8.7m tonnes by 2030. Pyrolysis is forecast to account for 46% of installed input capacity by 2030. Four chemical recycling technologies are
present in the market landscape today, together with a number of ‘other’ technologies which to date do not neatly fit into a defined category. (also see Technologies article p9). They differ in the types of polymers they can process, the outputs they produce, and the stage of maturity the facilities present in the market have achieved to date.
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Chemical and mechanical recycling both have the goal of producing quality products
IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK
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