German engineering plastics producer Covestro is heading up a four-year EU-funded innovation project with 22 partners from nine countries to help erase the industry’s recycling deficits and close the material cycle for rigid polyurethane foam used in refrigerators and building insulation.
Following trials earlier this year of its proprietary technology for advanced recycling – also referred to as chemical recycling – ExxonMobil has now announced its intention to build a large-scale plant in Baytown, Texas, USA.
Haldor Topsoe is partnering Dow to accelerate development of chemical recycling technology that converts hard-to-recycle waste plastics into pyrolysis oil feedstock. The Danish group will support the design and engineering of a 10,000 t/y market-development, or pilot, unit to be built at Dow’s site in Terneuzen, the Netherlands.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is said to be considering regulating the increasingly popular practice of chemical recycling. In a notice published in the Federal Register, the environmental watchdog that turned into the opposite during the Trump administration said it wants companies to provide more information on pyrolysis and gasification, with an eye to regulating these processes under the federal Clean Air Act.
With an eye toward the growing electric vehicle market, BASF has announced it will build a battery recycling prototype plant at the site of its cathode active materials (CAM) production facility in Schwarzheide, Germany.
Paris-headquartered engineering firm Technip Energies has agreed to cooperate with Agilyx Corporation on recycling of post-consumer polystyrene. The pact calls for the Technip group company to market and license the related technology of the two partners as an integrated package.
Spanish energy group Repsol is joining the Ecoplanta project that will build a waste-to-chemicals plant in Tarragona.
Finland’s Neste has taken a minority stake in Alterra Energy as the two collaborate to develop and license the US company’s chemical recycling technology. The size of the stake and financial terms were not disclosed.
Designed for their performance and durability, synthetic plastics have become indispensable as “materials of every-day use”. However, their characteristic long life span and indiscriminate disposal have led to an acute problem of plastic pollution. In order to address this issue, the European Union is not only trying to adopt a circular system to reuse, repair and recycle plastics (circular economy) but it also aims to produce plastics out of renewable resources (biobased plastics).
The chemical industry is on the threshold of a new era – the age of circularity. We asked industry experts to share their opinions on this transformational topic.
Cellugy was founded two years ago by a diverse team of young academics and professionals from Spain, Indonesia, Albania, and Denmark. Working together at Aarhus University in Denmark, the idea of developing a material based on nanocellulose as an alternative to plastic barrier coatings arose and grew into a start-up and a first product. Co-founders Isabel Alvarez-Martos and Deby Fapyane talk about their motivation and vision.
The shift to a circular economy requires intensive cooperation along the chemical value chain and across industries.
Ineos has joined forces with Plastic Energy to help promote and employ chemical recycling.
Since their invention after the World War II, plastics started to grow faster than any other standard material.
