Chemical upcycling of polyolefins into liquid refinery feedstock from the circularity and chemical engineering aspects

Date

2024-10-01

Author

Aydogdu, Arzum Ceren
Erkmen, Berrak
Suerkan, Ali
Ezdesir, Ayhan
Guliyev, Bilal
Çelik, Gökhan

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Three quarters of all plastics produced each year are discarded to landfill after a single use without proper waste management practices, causing a global environmental crisis: waste plastics suffocating our world at enormously large volumes. Discarding plastics into landfill, inefficiently processing them to lower value materials, or incinerating them cause an irreversible loss of the stored energy in plastics. These plastics, however, represent a tremendous resource for the production of chemicals and can be upcycled into high-quality value-added refinery feedstock that could be used to produce virgin polyolefins. In this article, we review pyrolysis and hydrogenolysis based chemical transformations to convert waste polyolefins into liquid hydrocarbons with a special emphasis on life cycle assessment (LCA), reactor technologies, and integration to existing refineries. Several patented technologies are described in detail to shed a light on engineering aspects of the chemical recycling. Liquid products obtained from chemical recycling are examined from the circularity point of view. Feedstock and stream locations in existing refineries and around steam crackers are recommended to feed and/or blend the products obtained from chemical recycling of polyolefins. Challenges, perspectives, and emerging areas of research and engineering are mentioned.

Subject Keywords

Chemical recycling, Circular economy, Circularity, Hydrocracking, Hydrogenolysis, LCA, Life cycle assessment, Polyethylene, Polyolefins, Polypropylene, Pyrolysis, Waste plastics

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85198008979&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/110297

Collections

Department of Chemical Engineering, Article