Page 24 - Plastics News November 2019

CompAny news

IOC close to Plastics-to-oil tech breakthrough

ndian Oil Corporation, India’s largest PSU refiner and wastes procurement. In another breakthrough, IOC has
Iretailer, is about to complete a research that could been successful in developing soluble polybags made from
throw up one of the biggest breakthroughs and help the single-use waste plastic for bitumen packaging.
government eliminate all single-use plastics from the
country by 2022. The company is finalizing the research, BNL doubles capacity of
undertaken over the past few years, for liquefaction of
toxic plastics waste. It would mean that IOC could put Thailand manufacturing facility
systems at its refineries and petrochemical complexes to
commercially produce oil from plastics waste. “The initial NL has completed the expansion of its plastic bearing
research on plastic liquefaction has been encouraging. Boperations in Thailand, moving operations to a state-
We now have to take this research to the proof stage, of-the-art, larger
which will also help us develop processes for commercial facility, adjacent to
extraction of oil from plastics waste,” said an IOC official. the existing building.
Since plastics are derived from petrochemicals, the idea BNL Thailand supplies
of converting its waste back into oil by pyrolyzing has
been pursued globally. In fact, plastic-to-oil commercial plastic bearings to
production is on in countries like China and Japan, where several industries,
yield levels varies from 38-63 per cent. Crude oil below including automotive,
$60 a barrel would not support the high cost of plastics food processing,
liquefaction and would negate investment in commercial photocopier, domestic
scale plants. Moreover, the process will also have to work appliances and ATM
customers. The new 50,000 sq. ft. facility in Rayong
will double capacity to support increasing demand
on existing products and new business wins in key
markets. the new Thailand facility also has the option
to triple the previous factory footprint, to 75,000
sq. ft., increasing the current number of injection
moulding machines on site by threefold, expanding
assembly services and tripling the workforce. “Our
team in Thailand have done a fantastic job in making
this development happen quickly and efficiently. I
shouldn’t be surprised; we employ great people in
to reduce carbon emissions. According to IOC chairman all our facilities and Thailand is no exception,” said
Rajiv Singh, while liquefaction initiative is being pursued Jonathan Wilkinson, CEO of BNL. “Our customers are
aggressively, the company is making other initiatives also our other key partners, collaborating with us to develop
to find a permanent solution for these toxic waste. Among innovative plastic bearing solutions. We are encouraged
other measures, the company is looking at converting by their support for our expansion and understanding
used cooking oil (UCO) to fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), of how our growth will in turn offer them new and
which has fuel properties similar to crude-based diesel improved services with which to develop and grow
and hence called biodiesel. Thus UCO could also become their own businesses.” BNL Thailand houses injection
a major source for production of biodiesel. The potential moulding, manual and automated assembly functions,
of biodiesel from UCO in India is estimated at 3.5 MMTPA. mirroring the established UK HQ operations, with the
IOC has also constructed 0.85 km of bituminous road paved Knaresborough, North Yorkshire site also housing R&D,
with different concentrations of single-use plastics wastes engineering, product design, quality, prototyping,
at Faridabad as a pilot project. It has also introduced CRMB tooling design and tool development capabilities. BNL
55P – special grade bitumen made with plastics waste – China also offer additional machining services at their
and has issued expression of interest (EOI) for plastics Shanghai site.

Plastics News November 2019 24