Project Description:
This project designs a facility that takes mixed plastic waste that would typically end up in landfills and converts it into useful chemical products through a process called pyrolysis, which involves heating plastic, specifically polypropylene for this process, to very high temperatures until it breaks apart into simpler molecules. The facility accepts around seven tonnes of plastic per hour, heats it to 540°C in a large industrial vessel, and recovers the resulting vapors as a mixed fuel-like liquid called naphtha. Naphtha is a class of material used as a starting point for making new plastics, fuels, and other chemicals. One of the most compelling features of the design is that the gases produced as a byproduct of the heating process contain enough energy to power the reactor itself, making the facility largely energy self-sufficient without needing external fuel sources. The separated naphtha product can be sold directly to petrochemical companies as a feedstock, and combined with revenue from selling excess process gas, the facility generates a net annual revenue of $8.6 million. This demonstrates that chemical recycling of plastic waste can be not only environmentally beneficial, reducing landfill burden and ocean pollution, but also genuinely profitable as a business.
