Neste and Technip join forces for ‘copy and paste’ liquefaction for plastics recycling

IN A BID to reduce the upfront costs for the chemical recycling of plastics, Neste, Alterra and Technip have formed a partnership to sell standardised modular process plants.

The plants will be centred around a thermochemical liquefaction process developed by Alterra that turns hard-to-recycle plastics into pyrolysis oil. These include polyethylene and polystyrene. The resulting oil can then be processed to produce fresh plastic in an effort to close the loop on plastic waste.

In 2020, Alterra commissioned a 60 t/d plastic recycling plant in Ohio, US, to demonstrate its continuous process. Neste began working with the company in 2021 to help improve the technology. Under a new partnership announced this month, Alterra and Neste will license the technology and Technip Energies will design, engineer, and deliver the standardised liquefaction plants to customers. They say this will lower pre-investment costs for customers and accelerate the implementation of their projects.

Frederic Schmuck, CEO of Alterra Energy, said: “We are reducing the hurdles for companies interested in investing in liquefaction. We are ultimately enabling a copy-paste solution for liquefaction plants, allowing for a fast scaleup of economically viable recycling capacities globally.”

Bhaskar Patel, senior vice-president of sustainable fuels, chemicals, and circularity at Technip Energies, expects the standard modular offering will help industry scale out the technology, allowing for faster deployment of chemical recycling capacity.