Descripción del proyecto
Separar los residuos plásticos con una nueva técnica de pirólisis
El equipo del proyecto Plastics2Olefins, financiado con fondos europeos, tiene como objetivo demostrar un nuevo proceso de reciclaje del plástico basado en la pirólisis a alta temperatura, ya que el producto principal será una corriente de gas en lugar de un líquido, por lo que reducirá las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero en más de un 70 % en todo el ciclo de vida en comparación con los procesos existentes de reciclaje del plástico para residuos plásticos no clasificados. El equipo del proyecto lo logrará mediante un método de dos etapas: primero, adaptará y probará una planta piloto a escala para optimizar los componentes y las condiciones del proceso y, por último, una planta pionera de demostración industrial a gran escala en la central petroquímica de Repsol. Para optimizar la huella de carbono de una planta de este tipo, el equipo del proyecto diseñará y construirá una planta que obtendrá toda su energía de fuentes renovables.
Objetivo
Globally 359 million metric tons of plastic were produced in 2018 and Europe produced 17% of this amount. In the same year, 29.1mio tons of plastic waste was generated in the EU and only a third was recycled. While sorted and pure plastic waste can be recycled relatively well, a major problem is recycling of unsorted waste, which still holds a large share of valuable carbon feedstock but is currently either landfilled or energetically valorised, i.e. incinerated, both producing greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions instead of recovering the precious carbon feedstock contained. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop new technologies that can not only valorise unsorted plastic but also other waste in large amounts to yield material streams that can replace fossil material streams. One promising technology to recycle unsorted heterogeneous plastic waste is pyrolysis. While the low to medium temperature pyrolysis (400C) produces mainly liquid oil that needs to be fed into the furnace of the steam cracker unit (at higher temperature than 900C) to produce olefins, with our proposal, at high-temperature pyrolysis (<850C) syngas stream (light olefins rich) is fostered and could be integrated downstream the furnace of the steam cracker. However, the use of high-temperature pyrolysis for plastic waste recycling has not yet become an industrial practice since gas treatment and integration present a great challenge.
Plastics2Olefins project will address this challenge - it will design, build, and run a demonstration plant for recycling of unsorted plastic waste at Repsol's plant Puertollano (Spain), which will be digitalised and run on 100% renewable (electric) energy.
The project estimates to reduce the lifecycle GHG emissions by 70-80% compared to incineration and existing plastics recycling processes providing an important contribution to the EU reaching climate neutral by 2050 and set a pathway for commercialisation of renewable plastic feedstock replacing fossil fuels.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Convocatoria de propuestas
HORIZON-CL4-2021-TWIN-TRANSITION-01
Consulte otros proyectos de esta convocatoriaRégimen de financiación
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinador
28045 Madrid
España