BP building pilot recycling plant for petro plastics in U.S.
The British energy major BP said Thursday it will build a new pilot plant for recycling plastics at its research and refining complex on the Illinois-Indiana border to eventually help combat the threat of plastic waste to the industry and the planet.
The $25 million pilot plant, which is expected to be completed next year, would test BP’s new “Infinia” technology to recycle plastics by returning them back to their original chemical components, providing feedstock to make new plastics. The growing amount of plastic waste, which is choking oceans and harming marine and wildlife, is provoking a public backlash and imperiling the future of the petrochemical sector.
Now companies such as BP and the Houston petrochemical company Lyondell Basell are building recycling plants that could eventually help address the problems.
The technology specifically would recycle polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, plastic waste from plastic bottles, packaging and containers. BP plans to use the pilot plant to better test the technology before rolling it out commercially worldwide. About 27 million metric tons of PET are produced each year with about 85 percent of the materials used to make plastic bottles, BP said.
“We see our Infinia technology as a game-changer for the recycling of PET plastics,” said Tufan Erginbilgic, BP’s chief executive for refining and petrochemicals.
“It is an important stepping stone in enabling a stronger circular economy in the polyester industry and helping to reduce un-managed plastic waste.”
The plastics are largely made from feedstocks that derive from natural gas liquids, specifically ethane, which come from shale plays such as West Texas’ booming Permian Basin and South Texas’ Eagle Ford shale. The shale boom this century also triggered waves of petrochemical construction along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast to manufacture more petrochemicals and plastics, largely to export them to growing markets in Asia, especially China and India.
The environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, however, criticized the BP project as a “desperate attempt from a plastic polluter” to find ways to keep producing larger volumes of plastics. The solution, said John Hocevar, Greenpeace oceans campaign director, is finding alternatives to single-use plastics rather than justifying their production
through potential recycling projects.
“Whether through fueling the climate crisis or recklessly expanding single-use plastics, BP has shown once again that business as usual for the oil industry means chaos for the rest of us,” he said. “This attempt to greenwash the continued use of toxic plastics is par for the course.”
Earlier this month, LyondellBasell said it would build a test plant of its own for recycling old plastics by returning them to their chemical components.
LyondellBasell worked with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a German university, to develop the new recycling technology, called MoReTec, which uses a catalyst to break down plastics more quickly and efficiently than traditional chemical recycling technologies, the company said.
LyondellBasell will build the first small-scale, test plant at its campus in Ferrara, Italy, which is home to much of the chemical and plastic maker’s research and development.