LyondellBasell creates pyrolysis feedstock JV

Netherlands-based petrochemical firm LyondellBasell and investment firm 23 Oaks Investments have agreed to create a joint venture company that will build a sorting plant in Germany aimed at providing feedstock for chemical recycling.

A LyondellBasell spokesman told Argus the new company, Source One Plastics, will build a unit to act as a second layer of sorting in the German market, taking waste fractions from existing sorting plants that would be destined for landfill or incineration and separating out the portions that are suitable for chemical recycling.

The plant will have an input capacity of 50,000 t/yr. LyondellBasell said it will provide "a material part" of the feedstock for the pyrolysis plant it is planning to build in Wesseling, Germany, on which it expects a final investment decision in the coming months.

Industrial-scale pyrolysis of plastic waste is in the early stages and different technologies will have a range of flexibility when it comes to feedstocks, but generally pyrolysis plants struggle to process PET and PVC. These are likely to be present in the difficult-to-recycle post-consumer waste stream that is currently sent by sorting plants to landfill or incineration, and that is the declared target feedstock for chemical recycling.

This creates a need for an extra step of sorting to separate pyrolysis-suitable plastic waste - particularly mixed polyethylene and polypropylene, which firms developing pyrolysis plants are eager to fill. Earlier this year, Austrian firm OMV said it would partner with waste management firm Interzero to build a 200,000 t/yr sorting plant in Walldrun, Germany, which will also act as a second layer of sorting to provide feedstock for chemical recycling.

By Will Collins