Commercialisation of WarwickFBR™ technology which can recycle Mixed Plastic Waste into a hydrocarbon product, the Plaxx™

Project Information

Waste to Resource

Grant agreement ID: 673465

DOI

10.3030/673465

Project closed

EC signature date 21 May 2015

Start date 1 June 2015

End date 31 October 2015

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

RECYCLING TECHNOLOGIES LTD.
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Waste to Resource (Commercialisation of WarwickFBR™ technology which can recycle Mixed Plastic Waste into a hydrocarbon product, the Plaxx™)

Reporting period: 2015-06-01 to 2015-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Plastic has become one of the most common materials in use since the 1950s. Unfortunately, what makes it so useful, namely its durability, light weight and low cost, also makes it problematic when it comes to the end-of-life phase. In 2012, 25.2 million tonnes of post-consumer plastics waste ended up in the waste upstream in the EU. Of this, only 6.6. million tonnes was recycled and rest was disposed of in landfills or recovered in energy from waste plants. Another issue with plastic waste is the plastic floating in oceans. It is estimated that up to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic waste ended up in the oceans in 2010.

Plastic waste can be economically recycled into new products using mechanical processes such as extrusion or injection moulding. However, this method is suitable only for single streams of clean plastics. Recycling Technologies have developed a technology, the WarwickFBR™, which can recycle end of life mixed plastic waste using pyrolysis. The output from the technology is a machine, the RT7000, that can convert the waste, into a valuable hydrocarbon product we call Plaxx™. Plaxx™ can be used as a substitute for Ultra Low Sulphur Heavy Fuel Oil, wax and as a polymer feedstock for plastic manufacturing. The technology is in the ‘demonstration to market’ stage. The key objective of this action was to engage with key stakeholder to assess the feasibility of our technology.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the project we had discussions with waste management companies, Plaxx™ end users and financiers. In addition to this a market assessment was carried out to verify the market size and target markets for early introduction of our technology. The main results were that our solution has a high volume global market with high potential in the EU. In the project we received interest with a number of waste companies all ready to install the RT7000 when the technology is fully demonstrated. User of Plaxx™ in the Heavy Fuel Oil, Slackwax and plastic feedstock market were identified who were willing to buy Plaxx™ at required prices. Considering the large market size and high return on investment, the financiers expressed keen interest to finance the commercial machines.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The results from the project confirmed that the technology is highly feasible and to reach commercialisation, the next step is to carry out a full scale technology demonstration. The output from out from this will be a machine which can recycle:
• Mixed Plastic Waste with minimal pre-treatment
• At a lower cost than the currently available solutions
• In a more environmentally beneficial process
• In a localised manner by taking the solution to plastic waste rather than transporting plastic to the solution.

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