Finnish oil company Neste has successfully completed the first series of test runs for processing liquefied plastic waste at its refinery in Porvoo, Finland. After the first test run in 2020, which was the very first time that liquefied plastic waste was processed on an industrial scale, further test runs followed in 2021.
During the test series, Neste succeeded in producing liquefied Processing plastic waste into drop-in raw materials for plastics production and develop the processes to industrial maturity.
Nests has set itself the goal of processing more than one million tonnes of plastic waste per year from 2030. To achieve this goal, the company is pushing ahead with chemical recycling, to turn plastic waste into a valuable raw material and strengthen the circular economy. For the first time ever, Neste successfully processed 400 tonnes of plastic waste in 2020, achieving an important milestone towards the company's goal of driving forward the circular economy in order to reduce the exploitation of fossil resources.
Further test runs were carried out over the course of 2021 in order to gain new insights into the processing of liquefied plastic waste and how the processes affect the workflows in the refinery. In addition, the focus was on proving that closing the loop in the plastics value chain is possible and that a circular economy can become a reality.
The tests confirm that Neste is already able to do this, process significant quantities of recycled raw materials into drop-in products for the petrochemical industry. At the same time, the company's own capacities are being further developed in order to process even larger quantities of plastic waste into even higher-quality raw materials for the petrochemical industry.
Source: Nests
