Project description
Organic waste and plastics could be the energy feedstock behind your next diesel car
Converting waste to fuel is an important way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, build a circular economy and decrease our carbon footprint. Plastics are largely produced from fossil fuels and consist of hydrocarbon polymers. Similarly, solid organic waste is a key potential starting point for high-energy-density liquid fuels. However, the conversion processes to date for plastics and organic waste have faced important challenges in terms of the types of materials processed, costs, sustainability and yield. The EU-funded CPD project will bring its proven waste-to-fuel technology to market to convert plastics and organic waste to diesel.
Objective
Catalytic Pressureless Depolymerization (CPD) is a technology belonging to waste-to-fuel field, that clearly surpasses exiting ones that are mainly based in pyrolysis or hydrogenation. We have developed until industrial scale CPD-Swiss, the first low-temperature (<320°) mean of conversion of plastic and organic waste into standard diesel (EN590). Thus, we go beyond current limits and drawbacks of fledging technologies (limitations of input material, high capex and opex, ecological issues, low energy performance and low yield) to bring a trustworthy technology that will enable the production of diesel in small and medium scale plants for a broad variety of customers: industry, municipal waste managers, agriculture and farming, forestry, oil refiners, blenders, among others. Supported by our science and technology partners for 10 years, we have performed intensive R&D, from laboratory tasks to the construction and assessment of a first relevant-size prototype producing 150 l/hour of synthetic diesel. Subsequently, we have improved our plant to an outstanding level of performance, profitability, automation and security that guarantees the robustness of our product. As a result, now we are capable to design, build and maintenance CPD-250 (2 million litres/year) and CPD-500 plants (4 million liters/years).
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
5330 BAD ZURZACH
Switzerland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.