A number of chemical recycling partnerships have been announced lately, involving companies including Ravago, Shell and even fashion brand Prada.
Chemical recycling collaboration: Finnish oil refining and marketing company Neste has teamed up with plastics company Ravago to develop a chemical recycling process for plastic scrap. The companies are collaborating to turn even mixed and colored plastics into feedstock for production of new plastics, chemicals and fuels. The companies are aiming to scale up to eventually process 440 million pounds of plastic per year.
Pyrolysis partnership: Petrochemicals giant Shell has produced high-end chemicals from a feedstock derived from plastic scrap, the company announced. Shell’s Norco, La. plant created the products using pyrolysis oil produced by Atlanta company Nexus Fuels. “Shell is working with multiple companies who collect and transform plastic waste in order to scale this solution to industrial and profitable quantities across its chemicals plants,” according to a press release. Shell’s goal is to use 2.2 billion pounds of scrap plastics per year at its plants by 2025.
Breaking down PET: Polyester reclaimer Poseidon Plastics has signed a deal to work with DuPont Teijin Films on the development of Poseidon’s depolymerization technology. According to a press release, the goal is to develop a plant with a processing capacity of 22 million pounds. Poseidon’s technology breaks down PET items such as trays, pots, containers, fibers and polyester composites into bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET), an intermediate chemical in PET production. DuPont will help support Poseidon with testing and processing the BHET into PET polymer and BOPET films.
Behind the scenes look: Fashion product brand Prada published a video taking an inside look at Aquafil’s nylon depolymerization plant in Slovenia. The video shows the plant, where scrap plastic, including carpet fiber and discarded fishing nets, are broken down into chemical building blocks and re-processed into ECONYL brand nylon fiber – that fiber is used by Prada in its Re-Nylon collection . In the video, Aquafil President Giulio Bonazzi said nearly 90 million pounds of plastic are recycled at the facility annually. Aquafil opened a carpet recycling facility in Arizona and is building one in California to generate plastic for processing in Slovenia.
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