With the Plastic2Plastic project, pyrolysis oils have been obtained from plastic waste for use as feedstock in the refinery sector and petrochemical industry.
The Plastic2Plastic project in which the GAIKER Technology Centre, member of the Basque Research & Technology Alliance, BRTA, has participated along with Zorroza Gestión S.L., the project leader, and Petronor, has come to an end with satisfactory results.
Plastic2Plastic started in 2021 with the aim of obtaining pyrolysis oils of sufficient quality for the manufacture of new products from plastic waste destined for landfill. This would give a second life to such waste and provide savings on raw materials and energy.
This was a continuity project, as GAIKER and PETRONOR had also been working on the REQUIPLAST project, which had studied the use of reject flows, with a high plastic content, to obtain oils with a homogeneous and controlled composition by means of the pyrolysis process.
This new research, financed by the Basque Government's Public Company for Environmental Management, Ihobe, as part of its circular eco-innovation aid programme, has addressed some of the key aspects previously identified in REQUIPLAST, such as:
The preparation and conditioning of waste for the subsequent pyrolysis process based on composition and morphology criteria.
The development of a robust and simple process that operates at moderate temperature and pressure conditions and which allows high yields of pyrolysis oils of a quality accepted by industrial pyrolysis oil conditioning facilities, for use as subsequent material.
The verification and control of the quality of the oils produced.
The evaluation of the options for material recovery of the by-products, such as the carbonaceous solid.
GAIKER has extensive experience in the development of processes for the chemical recycling of plastic, and also has a wide variety of sorting and conditioning equipment and pilot plants for scaling up thermochemical pyrolysis processes. For this reason, it has been responsible for both the definition of the waste sorting and conditioning processes and the optimisation of the selective pyrolysis process in this project. It has also analysed the pyrolysis oils and the carbonaceous product obtained in order to evaluate options for material recovery.
