It’s something most of us never give a second thought to-however, worldwide, a million of us pick up a disposable plastic drink bottle every minute. And what do we do with the empty once we’ve quenched our thirst? If we’re conscientious, we’ll put it in the trash, expecting it to be recycled or dealt with sustainably. But as we’ve all seen, they can be thoughtlessly cast aside and end up littering the streets or our oceans.
Almost 400 million tons of plastic are manufactured annually, with about half designed to be used only once. According to the journal Science Advances, a little over half—about 55%—of plastic waste is discarded, about 20% is incinerated, and the rest, 25%, is recycled. So, the vast majority of our plastic waste, including disposable plastic bottles, ends up in landfills or possibly the oceans. You’d think we should be proud of the 25% recycled, but there’s a catch: the Science Advances study shows that only about 6% of all plastic has been recycled in the last 70 years. Unfortunately, we’ve a long way to go before getting on top of plastic recycling.
Since the turn of the century, many firms have experimented and brought to market a variety of products made from recycled plastics. Disposable plastic bottles are now turned into shoes, building materials, and the list goes on. However, all of these recycled products reconstitute plastic using mechanical processes—either downcycling (turning water bottles into garden furniture or Astroturf where mechanical integrity or optical clarity isn’t an issue) or upscaling (plastic bottles become bird feeders, Christmas trees, or children’s toys).
The goal now is to return plastic to its constituent parts so it can either be burned more efficiently or reused as a constituent for new plastic products. The concept of converting plastic back into crude oil isn’t new; there are continuing efforts to develop commercial processes involving the breaking down of plastic bottles and other waste into their essential components using a method called pyrolysis.
In pyrolysis, intense heat of up to 900°C is applied to plastic waste in an oxygen-deprived environment, with various reactors breaking down the plastic molecules. The results from the process are oil and gas. In the early 2000s, a series of Japanese firms began building plastic-to-oil conversion plants to apply the technology in the real world. However, these plants were forced to close due to fires, industrial accidents, and economic problems. Other countries have been working on building pyrolysis plants that are large enough to be commercially viable.
In contrast, one Japanese company is using groundbreaking technology to convert waste into what they call “vir oil,” to be reused as fuel or for new plastics production. Environment Energy aspires to commercialize a method called HiOP, with its first commercial plant due to come online in 2025. It is the first commercially available waste plastic oil converter that uses a catalytic cracking method, and the company has partnered with a Japanese petroleum company to refine the crude oil produced using HiOP. The aim is to convert 20,000 tons of plastic waste into crude oil annually.
The CEO of Environment Energy, Shuji Noda, says a core purpose of this technology is to create a circular economy in which waste becomes the source of new materials. The method was developed and patented by Professor Kowo Fujimoto of the University of Tokyo and Professor Xia Hong Lee from the University of Kakusu. It uses catalysts already employed in petroleum refining to distill heavy crude oil molecules into lighter molecules such as gasoline at temperatures up to about 450°C. The catalysts attach to the plastic surface, break the material into smaller pieces, and eventually convert them into hydrocarbon gases, which are then concentrated into crude oil.
The HiOP process yields crude oil abundant in gasoline and diesel, and it’s higher-quality oil than can be achieved with pyrolysis technology. The new technique is expected to lead to a shift from conventional thermal recycling to chemical recycling. The HiOP method has several advantages over conventional recycling; first off is safety because catalytic cracking makes the reaction milder than in pyrolysis and is therefore safer. The process yields about 80% by weight of oil recovered, depending on the quality of plastic waste used. The pilot plant processes about 120 tons of waste per month, operating 24/7. With this operation, the catalyst needs to be changed every three days, which takes about half a day to perform, making the plant highly efficient. The resultant mixture is high-quality oil containing 50% gasoline and 50% diesel. The liquid can undergo fractional distillation to create petroleum products for other uses. The base product from the system can be used as fuel in transportation, generators, and home heating, as well as raw material in plastic production.
The company hopes plastic-to-oil conversion will fill a gap in the recycling landscape, both in Japan and overseas. Unsurprisingly, this new recycling process comes from Japan, where mechanical recycling is the dominant method. A little over a fifth of Japan’s plastic waste processing involves sorting, washing, and then grinding—this requires the plastic waste to be clean and, despite that, it yields lower-quality products with a strong odor and an unattractive color. On the other hand, chemical recycling currently only accounts for 4% of Japan’s plastic waste processing. Environment Energy says this is an opportunity to increase the amount of plastic recycled in Japan and suggests HiOP has the potential to take on the bulk of the growth.
CEO Shuji Noda explains the benefits of recycling consumer plastics, such as food packaging, which is typically heavily contaminated and thus harder to recycle. Research into plastic-to-oil conversion is happening worldwide, but there appears to be a big push in Japan. With few natural resources, Japan has always been a huge importer of oil and oil-based products and is a massive consumer of plastics, especially in packaging. Consumer tastes for safe and clean product use have resulted in overpackaging.
Japan now generates almost 40 kg of single-use plastic waste per person annually, one of the highest rates in the world. So, it’s no wonder Japan is pioneering new developments in recycling plastic waste.
In the time it’s taken you to read this article, another 10 million disposable plastic bottles have been bought globally. To give you an idea of the scale, putting them end-to-end, the line of bottles would stretch from London all the way across Europe to Istanbul. So, it’s not just the Japanese who have to be concerned; we all have our part to play.
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