Recycling: Versalis starts constructing demo chemical recycling plant in Italy; OMV/Interzero to build EUR170 mn sorting facility for chemical recycling in Germany

Italy’s Versalis, Eni’s chemical company, has begun construction of a demo plant in Mantua to develop Hoop, its proprietary technology for chemical recycling of mixed plastic waste. The Hoop technology demo plant will have capacity to handle 6,000 tonnes of secondary raw material, and is scheduled to be up and running by the end of 2024.

Hoop stems from a joint project with Italian engineering company S.R.S. (Research and Development Services). The venture is aimed at developing an innovative technology that complements mechanical recycling by transforming mixed plastic waste into raw materials to produce new virgin polymers.

The project was made possible by the collaboration – initiated in 2020 – with Corepla (National Consortium for the Collection, Recycling and Recovery of Plastic Packaging) to enhance the value of post-consumer plastics from national recycling collection.

The technology, named Hoop to evoke circularity, has been integrated with the plastics pyrolysis product purification technologies of Technip Energies, an engineering and technology company for the energy transition, developing a technology platform for advanced chemical recycling.

Hoop is the only Italian technology to have won an award from the 2023 ‘EU Innovation Fund’, allocated by the European Commission with a total of EUR3.6 billion and focused on innovative low-carbon technologies - with 239 projects submitted and 41 total winners.

“The Hoop project is an important step forward in Versalis’ strategy to develop chemical recycling technology, complementary to mechanical recycling, to ensure full circularity for all plastics. The project will boost the recycling of plastic waste, thereby contributing to the recycling targets at national level in order to achieve the ones set by the European Commission,” commented Versalis CEO Adriano Alfani.

Meanwhile in related news, Austrian chemical firm OMV has announced the final investment decision to build a sorting plant developed by Interzero to produce feedstock for chemical recycling. In total, OMV will invest an amount of over EUR170 million to build this facility in Walldürn, southern Germany. OMV will hold 89.9% of the shares in the joint venture and 10.1% of the shares will belong to Interzero, a provider of circular economy solutions.

Production start of the new plant is expected to take place in 2026. Around 120 new jobs will be created at the new site. The groundbreaking ceremony is already scheduled for November 2023.

The sorting facility will be the first of its kind to produce feedstock for OMV’s chemical recycling on a large industrial scale. The ReOil technology developed and patented by OMV is a chemical recycling innovation that converts plastic waste that cannot be mechanically recycled into pyrolysis oil – a valuable resource. The input for the sorting plant essentially involves mixed plastics that have not been recyclable until now, especially those collected separately from the yellow bag and the yellow bin recycling system in Germany.

Interzero operates five sorting plants for lightweight packaging in Germany and sorts about a third of Germany’s lightweight packaging waste in the form of over 800,000 tonnes/year. This means that the company has the largest sorting capacity in Europe at present and is the technology leader.

The cooperation between OMV and Interzero will ensure the supply of sustainable and high-quality feedstock for OMV’s chemical recycling, helping to close the loop for plastics.

The sorting facility developed by Interzero will be capable of processing up to 260,000 tonnes/year of mixed waste plastics, providing the raw materials for the production of virgin polyolefins. This innovative sorting process will make it possible to recover a polyolefin-rich fraction from a waste stream that currently ends up in thermal recycling. In terms of the waste hierarchy, the focus is on waste plastics that are not suitable for mechanical recycling.

This ensures that chemical recycling does not compete with mechanical recycling. The sorting process used in the new facility has already been tested on an industrial scale and the product has been successfully processed as feedstock in OMV’s ReOil pilot plant.

A new ReOil plant with a capacity of 16,000 tonnes/year is currently under construction at OMV’s Schwechat site in Austria. Like the existing pilot plant, the new plant will have International Sustainability and Carbon certification (ISCC PLUS), which ensures traceability throughout the supply chain and guarantees that the value chain meets all environmental and social standards.

The ReOil plant will be fully integrated within the petrochemical production units at the Schwechat refinery, allowing OMV to ensure optimal use of resources and maximum efficiency. The next step is the development of an industrial-scale ReOil plant with a planned capacity of 200,000 tonnes/year. 

(PRA)

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