Page 82 - Plastics News July 2025

IN THE NEWS

Amid controversy, industry goes all

in on plastics pyrolysis

ow declared a milestone in its effort to These firms argue that pyrolysis can make up
mitigate the flow of plastic waste. The for the shortcomings of mechanical recycling,
Dbig chemical company and Mura Tech- the familiar process of washing and repelletiz-
nology took the wraps off a project in Böhlen, ing the plastics that consumers drop into blue
Germany, to build a plant based on Mura’s su- bins. Only two polymers—the polyethylene tere-
percritical steam process. The facility will con- phthalate (PET) found in soda and water bottles
vert mixed plastic waste into hydrocarbon liq- and the high-density polyethylene in milk jugs
uids that Dow will load into its ethylene cracker and other such containers—are widely recycled
at the site for conversion back into new plastics. at an appreciable scale. And it is difficult to get

The plant will be the largest of its kind in Europe,
diverting 120,000 metric tons (t) of waste per
year from incinerators. It will be six times the
size of Mura’s first plant, still under construction
in Teesside, England. The partners hope to build
additional facilities at Dow sites in Europe and
the US for a total of 600,000 t of annual capac-
ity.

“Böhlen is sort of a base case, and it will just get
larger from there,” Oliver Borek, Mura’s chief
commercial officer, said during a press confer-
ence. An executive from the engineering firm
KBR, which is licensing the process beyond Dow
and Mura, noted that his firm is already design-
ing three plants in South Korea and one in Japan.

Petrochemical makers are fully behind the broad
array of pyrolysis processes, like Mura’s, under
development around the world. Nearly every
large chemical company—Dow, BASF, Shell, Exx-
onMobil, LyondellBasell Industries, Sabic, Ineos,
Braskem, and TotalEnergies, to name some—ei-
ther has joined hands with a smaller firm devel-
oping a process or is creating its own.

82 PLASTICS NEWS July 2025