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ExxonMobil, BP, TotalEnergies, Shell make moves in plastics recycling
30 May 2022Clay Boswell
The advanced recycling of plastics remains a largely
developmental activity, but the pace of investment is accelerating
globally. With many commercial-scale processing facilities under
construction, it may not be long before it begins to make a
significant contribution to material supplies.
Advanced recycling, also known as molecular or chemical
recycling, is essential to converting the plastics economy to
circularity. Although mechanical recycling is preferred, owing to
its resource efficiency, its implementation is severely constrained
by degradation and contamination.
According to a recent study by S&P Global's Circular
Plastics Service, mechanical recycling would be unlikely to exceed
22% of all recycling by 2050, even assuming significant advances in
sorting, product design, and purification.
And it comes as pressure on major players in the petrochemicals
and oil industries over plastics pollution grows, including from a
May investigation by California
Attorney General Rob Bonta, who subpoenaed ExxonMobil for the oil
major's role in what he alleged was a "decades-long plastics
deception campaign."
The last few months have seen a flurry of announcements relating
to capital projects, development partnerships, and supply
agreements that demonstrate steady progress across the range of
recycling technologies.
Pyrolysis continues to dominate, in part because
it is a mature technology able to convert a wide range of mixed
plastics to pyrolysis oil, a naphtha-like material that can be
processed by conventional steam crackers to produce olefins and
aromatics.
ExxonMobil, Shell interest
Several new projects focus on polystyrene (PS). Oregon-based
Agilyx has been a front-runner in this area, originally developing
pyrolysis for the conversion of PS to styrene monomer, and later
adapting the technology to produce methyl methacrylate (MMA) from
polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA). In February, Toyo Styrene announced
plans to build a $33-million, 3,000-mt/year PS recycling unit based
on Agilyx's technology in Chiba, Japan. Startup is slated for the
second half of 2023. According to an August 2021 announcement,
Agilyx and Kumho Petrochemical are considering whether to build a
PS recycling facility in South Korea. In December, Agilyx and
Mitsubishi Chemical Methacrylates said they are considering the
construction of a PMMA recycling plant.
In the meantime, Cyclyx International, a plastics recycling
feedstock consortium co-founded by Agilyx and ExxonMobil, is adding
new members. In December 2021, Cyclyx announced plans for a "first
of its kind" waste plastics recovery facility to process feedstock
for committed offtake into advanced recycling projects on the US
Gulf Coast. Startup of the facility, which would process up to
60,000 mt/year of plastic, is slated for late 2022. Cyclyx is
planning a network of similar recovery facilities linked to
committed offtake.
ExxonMobil itself is a likely customer for the Cyclyx facility.
The company's 30,000-mt/year pyrolysis unit in Baytown, Texas, is
scheduled to begin operations in late 2022, and in March,
ExxonMobil said it aims to increase its total advanced recycling
capacity to 500,000 mt/year by the end of 2026.
Shell announced several major moves in late 2021, including
plans to build two pyrolysis oil upgraders in the Netherlands to
produce feedstock for its steam crackers at Moerdijk in the
Netherlands, and Wesseling, Germany. Pryme will supply pyrolysis
oil produced by a 60,000 mt/year plant currently under construction
in Rotterdam, and from a planned 350,000-mt/year plant slated for
completion in 2024. Another upgrading unit is to be built in
Singapore. Startup for all the projects is slated for 2023.
BP, TotalEnergies offtakers
In May, TotalEnergies inked a contract with
Texas-based New Hope Energy to receive 100,000 metric tons
(mt)/year of pyrolysis oil to produce circular plastics at its
facilities in Texas. New Hope, which has been operating its Trinity
Oaks pyrolysis plant in Tyler since 2018, had already signed a
multi-year supply contract with Dow in January. To support these
contracts, New Hope is expanding the Trinity Oaks plant to 16,000
mt/year by the end of 2022 and 156,000 mt/year by 2025.
New Hope has partnered with Lummus Technology to license, scale
up, and further develop its processing technology globally. In
November 2021, a new Lummus subsidiary, Green Circle, announced
UK-based Phigenesis had licensed the technology for a proposed
150,000-mt/year plant in Europe. Since December 2021, Green Circle
has offered New Hope's pyrolysis technology in combination with
Chevron Lummus Global's isoconversion technology and Lummus
Technology's steam cracking technology. The result is an integrated
package for the production of polymer-grade ethylene, polymer-grade
propylene, and butadiene from mixed plastic waste.
Separately, BP announced a 10-year naphtha
offtake agreement with Clean Planet Energy, which is building a
20,000 mt/year pyrolysis-based plant in Teesside in the UK. Clean
Planet Energy intends to build up to 12 plants globally.
With demand for pyrolysis oil gaining momentum, other companies
have unveiled projects, mostly of a similar scale. In May, Xycle, a
joint venture of Vopak, NoWIT, and Patpert Teknow Systems, announced plans to begin
building a 20,000 mt/year pyrolysis plant in Rotterdam in the
Netherlands, by the end of 2022, with the plant expected to be
operational in the fourth quarter of 2023. Xycle aims eventually to
operate plants with capacities of 80,000-100,000 mt/year.
In April, Houston-based Freepoint Eco-Systems said it would
proceed with construction of a pyrolysis-based plant in Hebron,
Ohio. Completion of the facility, which will have capacity to
process about 90,000 mt/year of plastic waste, is slated for 2023.
In October 2021, Freepoint announced it was partnering with
TotalEnergies and Plastic Energy to build a 33,000-mt/year facility
in Texas that is scheduled to start up by mid-2024.
TotalEnergies has been especially active, first partnering with
Plastic Energy in 2020 to build a 15,000-mt/year conversion plant
at the French oil major's Grandpuits complex in France. That unit
is slated for startup in 2023. In January, the two companies
extended their partnership, announcing plans to build a
33,000-mt/year facility in Seville, Spain, with startup slated for
early 2025.
Also in Spain, a 30,000-mt/year plant is planned by Honeywell
and Sacyr, a Spain-based engineering and services company.
Announced in November 2021, the facility will be located in
Andalucia. In January, Honeywell announced a joint venture with
Houston-based Avangard Innovative to build another 30,000-mt/year
plant in Waller, Texas. Both projects will employ Honeywell's
UpCycle technology, and are slated to begin operations in 2023.
Braskem in February announced it plans to build
Brazil's first advanced recycling plant, a 6,000-mt/year pyrolysis
unit based on technology developed by Valoren. To be located in the
city of Indaiatuba, the plant is slated to begin operations in
early 2023.
Bucking this trend toward small scale is the $1.1-billion
project unveiled in April by Texas'
Encina Development Group. Based on the company's proprietary
plastic fluid catalytic cracking (PFCC) process, the Pennsylvania
facility has been designed to produce 450,000-mt/year of aromatics,
rather than stopping at pyrolysis oil. Encina expects to have the
facility fully operational by fall 2024.
--Article first appeared in S&P Global Commodity
Insights' Chemical Week publication.
This article was published by S&P Global Commodity Insights and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.