The world’s first commercial-scale plant to recycle all forms of plastic using high-pressure steam began construction in the northeast of England, an area where some of the first large-scale plastic manufacturing started in the 1930s.
According to the Ellen McArthur Foundation, approximately 350 million tons of plastic are produced annually worldwide. That figure is estimated to rise to 600 million tons over the next two decades, with only 14% collected for recycling. Overall, global plastic production is expected to produce 390 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Mura Technology is building the new plant to process this hard-to-recycle plastic using its own HydroPRS supercritical steam—where water is heated to a high temperature and pressure to such a point that its properties turn into gas and liquid simultaneously.
The company claims that the process can convert any form of plastic (including packaging with multiple layers that generally aren’t recyclable) into the oils and chemicals they originated in around 25 minutes. The resulting substance can then be used to create new plastics with an unlimited number of times it can be recycled, versus only once or twice for most existing recycled products. Routing that oil back into new plastic keeps the material in circulation, whereas processes that target liquid fuel instead accept that it will be burned. That trade-off sits at the heart of the debate over whether plastic-to-fuel should count as recycling at all.
Steve Mahon, the CEO of Mura Technology, said:
“A new solution is needed to recycle those materials that mechanical recycling cannot. It is also important to recognize the value of waste plastic as a ready resource for the manufacture of plastic, decouple production from fossil resources, and entering plastic into a circular economy, avoiding wasting this useful and flexible material.”
The plant will cost $41 million (30 million pounds) to build and process up to 80,000 metric tons of plastic waste each year once operating by the end of 2022. Eventually, the company plans to build more plants on sites in other countries, including the United States.
In 2020, a group of scientists led by chemist Eugene Chen of Colorado State University developed a new kind of plastic, PBTL, that can be recycled endlessly.
