Borealis has joined forces with the EU-funded Project ELECTRO to facilitate the development of circular feedstocks. This initiative unites universities, research institutions, and industry leaders to create electrified, high-efficiency recycling technologies aimed at converting low-quality waste into premium raw materials.

Source: PackagingEurope

Project ELECTRO focuses on developing electrified thermochemical processes to transform mixed and hard-to-recycle waste, including multi-layer packaging and contaminated plastics, into high-purity olefins like ethylene and propylene. By utilizing renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels, ELECTRO aims for a reduction of up to 90% in greenhouse gas emissions, aligning with the EU's goals for circularity and decarbonization.

Borealis contributes to the project by:

• Evaluating the full range of pyrolysis oil (pyoil) and its fractions
• Optimizing circular hydrocarbon mixtures for large-scale cracking
• Developing tailored cracking strategies for various pyoil qualities
• Implementing prefractionation, advanced filtration, and quality assessments to enhance process performance

Additionally, Borealis links Project ELECTRO with Project STOP, a waste management initiative co-founded by Borealis and Systemiq in 2017. Household plastics collected in Indonesia through Project STOP are utilized in ELECTRO's research, enabling the consortium to assess the feasibility of chemical recycling for challenging, low-value waste streams.

In April of this year, VTT and LUT University announced their success in converting biogenic carbon dioxide from waste incineration and the forestry sector into polypropylene, polyethylene, and other 'high-value-added' products, following a three-year carbon capture and utilization project. The aim was to explore how different technologies could generate renewable plastic raw materials using carbon dioxide and green hydrogen.

Recently, Indaver revealed that its Plastics2Chemicals facility in Antwerp is producing chemically recycled raw materials for 'virgin quality' packaging applications, with an expected annual capacity of 26,000 tons. Plastics2Chemicals employs Indaver's thermal depolymerization technology to break down polymers into monomers, which are then purified and distilled for use in contact-sensitive applications.