CaRePlast-Chemical Recycling of Plastic Wastes

The commodity plastics based on the petroleum process are non-biodegradable, which accumulate of near-permanent plastic waste and present a long-term challenge. About 150 million tons of plastic wastes are produced globally per year, thereby causing a visible environmental pollutant both on the land and in the oceans. The European Commission has released a Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy provides a great impetus for the plastics industry to increase the circularity of a material that offers extraordinary benefits for society. Pyrolysis, as a chemical recycling method, has become the most promising and environmentally attractive technology for large-scale recycling of plastic wastes. With chemical recycling, plastic waste streams can be converted back into pyrolysis naphtha (secondary raw material) to replace primary raw materials as feedstock for the chemical industry. The underlying idea of the project is to develop efficient catalysts and integrated pyrolysis process for recycling of a broad spectrum of mixed plastic wastes to optimize pyrolysis oil for the use as feedstock in steam crackers to produce light olefin.

The commodity plastics based on the petroleum process are non-biodegradable, which accumulate of near-permanent plastic waste and present a long-term challenge. About 150 million tons of plastic wastes is produced globally per year, thereby causing a visible environmental pollutant both on the land and in the oceans. The European Commission has released a Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy provides a great impetus for the plastics industry to increase the circularity of a material that offers extraordinary benefits for society. Pyrolysis, as a chemical recycling method, has become the most promising and environmentally attractive technology for large-scale recycling of plastic wastes. With chemical recycling, plastic waste streams can be converted back into pyrolysis naphtha (secondary raw material) to replace primary raw materials as feedstock for the chemical industry. The underlying idea of the project is to develop efficient catalysts and integrated pyrolysis process for recycling of a broad spectrum of mixed plastic wastes to optimize pyrolysis oil for the use as feedstock in steam crackers to produce light olefin. The proposed CaRePlast project will develop 1) a three-step ex-situ catalytic pyrolysis process: first low-temperature (< 300 C) pyrolysis to selectively decompose the Cl containing plastics (>95%), adding solid sorbent in the second step fast pyrolysis at a temperature range of 400-500 C to remove Cl to ppm level (<10 ppm) and to produce pyrolysis oil yield of > 70 wt% and ex-situ catalytic upgrading of pyrolysis vapor in a third step to pyrolysis oil with well-controlled product distribution; 2) develop the hierarchical zeolite and non-zeolite catalysts with controlled acidic properties to minimize the secondary cracking process in the ex-situ catalytic upgrading thus reduce non-condensable gas (NCG) yield (< 15 wt%) and increase pyrolysis naphtha (C4-C12) yield of > 40 wt%.