Finland's Neste to launch study into commercializing waste plastic recycling

Finland-based refiner Neste is conducting a feasibility study into investing in capacity to commercially process liquefied waste plastic, the company said in a statement March 29.

The company aims to pre-treat and upgrade liquefied waste plastic as part of integrated operations at its Porvoo refinery, with an initial target capacity of 400,000 mt/year.

This comes as part of the company's aim to process over 1 million mt/year of waste plastic from 2030.

Neste aims to produce drop-in petrochemical feeds such as pyrolysis oil from liquefied waste plastic, which requires intermediate refining to remove impurities and optimize chemical composition.

"To turn chemical recycling into a viable and industrial-scale feed source for our downstream partners in the polymers and chemicals value chain, we have to bridge the quality gap between unprocessed liquefied waste plastic oil and our customers' raw material requirements," Mercedes Alonso, Neste's executive vice president of Renewable Polymers and Chemicals said in the statement.

Neste carried out a series of successful trial-runs for processing liquified plastic waste in 2021 and continues to trial larger volumes in 2022.

The company said unprocessed liquefied waste plastic was usable on a trial-scale, though pre-treatment and upgrading of material was necessary on an industrial scale.

"The goal is to turn waste plastics into valuable resources and a sustainable replacement for crude oil," Markku Korvenranta, executive vice president of Oil Products, said.