PTQ Q3 2025 Issue

Accelerating adoption rates of chemical recycling

Evaluation of collaborative efforts towards the development of technological solutions for facilitating commercial-scale pyrolysis oil upgrading through an FCC unit

Olav Stadaas and Linnéa Petersson Quantafuel Niklas Jakobsson ChemAcc AB Guillaume Vincent, Lucas Dorazio, Melissa Clough Mastry, and Bilge Yilmaz BASF

G lobal plastics waste volumes are expected to increase from 260 million tons per year (mmtpy) in 2016 to 460 mmtpy per year by 2030, possibly resulting in important environmental concerns. 1 Only 16% of plastics waste is collected for recycling, while the majority is sent to incineration (25%) and landfills (40%) or lost as unman - aged dumps (19%). Plastics waste going to landfill and incineration is ultimately lost as a resource and cannot be reused or recycled. Reusing plastics can influence cost sav - ings and reduce carbon emissions for plastics production.1 Mechanical recycling is often considered an optimal solu- tion for recycling plastics. However, its reach is constrained, especially when dealing with plastics that are mixed or con- taminated with unwanted substances like metals, paper, other types of polymers or fillers. Chemical recycling has been shown to be a valuable alter- native to transform waste plastic into its monomeric forms or other valuable products when mechanical recycling is not an option.2 Chemical recycling via pyrolysis uses thermochemi - cal conversion of recycled plastics in the absence of oxygen – often referred to as plastic pyrolysis.3 The to-be recycled plastics are introduced into a pyrolysis reactor (which can be purely thermal or catalytic) to produce a range of products from monomers to intermediate products (oils). The pyrolysis oil market has been growing in recent years with great interest from refiners and chemical manufac - turers. This growth is further accelerated when different organisations, companies, and research organisations col- laborate as technology allies to further develop and share knowledge. In this collaboration, Quantafuel worked with BASF to select an optimal catalyst for its catalytic pyrolysis process, providing the flexibility to tailor the oil boiling point range of the resulting product, depending on end-user needs. In this case, BASF and Quantafuel made a decision to evaluate a full boiling point range pyrolysis oil with little to no pre-distillation. BASF then conducted in-depth anal- yses and further crackability studies. The in-depth study was divided into two parts with dis - tinct objectives. The first part evaluated the upgrading of pyrolysis oil in a fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) context at a 10% co-processing level. This study was designed to demonstrate what a commercial FCC might do in terms

of a co-processing trial. Since refiners often do not elect to go for 100% recycled oil right away, they often do step tests from 1-20% before increasing to higher levels. Thus, 10% pyrolysis oil mixed with 90% vacuum gas oil (VGO) is representative of an FCC trial. The resulting products from such an FCC trial include sustainable transportation fuels (for example, naphtha) and LPG olefins. In the second part of this study, the pyoil was processed at 100%, while using different catalyst designs to produce more sustainable chemicals, including BTX (benzene, tolu - ene, and xylenes), propylene, and butylenes. This study was designed to be more applicable to a chemicals producer. Experimental Catalytic measurements were made using a laboratory- scale fluid bed cracking reactor. Cracking severity was var - ied to target different products by adjusting both reaction temperature (550°C and 600°C) and catalyst-to-oil ratio (4-to-6). For product evaluations, the naphtha product was

Production of recycled plastics

Quantafuel Chemical recycling of plastic waste

New plastic products

Chemical recycling

Plastic waste

Waste sorting

Figure 1 Quantafuel’s chemical recycling process of waste plastics

PTQ Q3 2025