In Norway, waste management company IVAR, chemical recycling company Quantafuel AS and waste-based fuels and materials aggregator and supplier Geminor AS have been collaborating in the chemical recycling of waste plastic from the Stavanger region. The first "virgin-grade" oil developed from waste plastic in the plastic-to-liquids (PtL) project is now ready for use in new plastic products.
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In the Stavanger region, plastics and metal packaging are sorted at IVAR’s modern sorting plant, where valuable resources are extracted from household waste.
In a collaborative project with Quantafuel, waste plastic with the right properties has been sent to the company’s “ChemCycling” chemical recycling plastic-to-liquids plant in Skive in Denmark, where Quantafuel is transforming plastic waste into recycled feedstock materials.
This pyrolysis oil can be used to produce new plastic products that have high-quality requirements in both Norway and the EU, such as food packaging.
We have been processing plastic from the IVAR plant for a few months now, and we find that the quality of the oil that is produced satisfies the requirements of our customer BASF. The oil holds a quality that can be used in products such as transport boxes for fish, food packaging, and thermo-boxes for temperature-sensitive medicines, said Terje Eiken, Chief Operating Officer at Quantafuel.
IVAR’s waste sorting plant in Stavanger recycles plastic, metal, and paper. So far in 2022, Quantafuel has received some 150 tonnes of plastic for chemical recycling from IVAR.
This production is an important step toward more efficient material recycling. We look forward to taking greater responsibility in reaching the ambitious recycling goals of the EU, Terje Eiken said.
A milestone for plastic recycling
Commissioned in 2020, Quantafuel’s Plastic-to-Liquids (Ptl) plant in Skive is a first-of-its-kind facility and is presently scaled to process 20 000 tonnes of mixed plastic waste per year from households in Norway and Denmark.
Global chemicals major BASF SE has an offtake for the entire production in Skive.
The pyrolysis oil is sent to BASF’s Ludwigshafen site in Germany for use as recycled feedstock for new plastic products and chemicals displacing virgin fossil feedstock.
Project leader at IVAR, Rudolf Meissner, sees great opportunities in the collaboration with Quantafuel.
We have for some time been searching for recycling solutions that provide an even higher recycling rate for our sorted plastic. Quantafuel is able to utilize plastics that cannot be recycled in other ways, said Rudolf Meissner.
Geminor is responsible for the logistics when IVAR’s waste plastic is exported for chemical recycling in Denmark.
Being a part of this project, it is great to finally see a finished oil product based on chemical recycling. The tests show that plastic qualities such as LDPE and PP foil are well suited for this purpose, said Kjetil Hausken, Geminor’s Country Manager in Norway.
Hausken sees the chemically produced oil as a milestone in the common effort to increase the material recycling rate of waste plastics in Norway and elsewhere.
Finding, sorting, and treating plastic that is suitable for pyrolysis is an ongoing process in Scandinavia and the EU. Chemical recycling not only requires the right type of plastic, but also the right quality and purity. It is important that more waste producers become familiar with this process, as we depend on high-quality sorting and large volumes of plastic to be able to meet international recycling ambitions. High expertise, solid routines, and adapted equipment are all important factors in this important work, ended Kjetil Hausken.
