This reactor is supposed to do the impossible:
Recycle the unrecyclable.
Such as these tires, that would otherwise
just be burned or end up in landfills.
A possible solution: Chemical recycling.
[nauseating cough]
It breaks plastic down into its original components
to create new plastic – an infinite cycle.
At least, that’s what the companies are telling us.
But is the technology really a solution
to the looming plastic crisis?
"Generally we collect, and then we sort,
and sort, and sort some more.
All mechanically.
That’s how we recycle 99% of our plastic waste in Europe.
But with these tires, that doesn’t work.
Recycled rubber can only be used
for a few things though,
like race tracks for example.
And the world only needs so many of those,
but there's an abundance of tires.
So instead of recycling them, they are
burned because of their heating value.
At Pyrum's facility in Germany, old tires that would otherwise
just be incineration are broken down
into their original components.
"That looks like a lot, but it goes through fast.
That pile over there will be done in two or three hours."
[Reporter] "Two or three hours?"
"Yes, all that over there."
[Reporter] "Oh my gosh."
In the first step, the tires are shredded.
Three times.
The outcome: textile fibers, steel wool and rubber.
The fibers can be used as insulation
and the steel is melted into new steel again.
"So far, so good. But chemical recycling
goes a lot further than this.
And that's why this rubber
goes into that thing."
A pyrolysis reactor that cooks everything at a really high temperature.
The rubber granules are put in at the very bottom
and make their way to the top of the tower.
Then gravity does its thing and everything drops towards the bottom.
The rubber granulate is heated to around
700 degrees Celsius in the tower.
It's practically cooked out and
breaks down into its components.
The resulting gas is discharged and supplies
the process with electricity.
In the end, two solids come out of the plant:
pyrolysis oil and coke or carbon black.
And the whole system is locked up air-tight.
"You don’t really smell anything here because it’s all closed off
and heated without oxygen, but it’s like
really really hot because that thing runs at
700 degrees celsius, which is the
hottest [thing] that I’ve ever stood next to."
But as you can imagine, it takes an immense amount of energy to heat that much plastic
because you're essentially breaking chemical bonds.
And this amount of energy is also one of the biggest concerns
from an environmental point of view when it comes to pyrolysis.
"Gas remains at the end of the process.
And that goes through a cleaning system,
then into a buffer tank and from the buffer tank
into two thermal plants.
These are actually power generators.
They are two big 12 cylinders and they produce
the electricity for the whole plant."
[Reporter] "For the whole plant? So it’s really completely energy self-sufficient,
even though it's such an energy-intensive process?"
"Pyrolysis is completely self-sufficient, even though it is considered so energy-intensive."
This means that Pyrum’s energy recovery process
is producing enough energy
to heat 300 family homes for an entire year.
This concept of pyrolysis that’s done here
is the most popular way of chemical recycling currently.
Facilities are popping up all over the world,
like here in India,
China,
or Saudi Arabia.
"The problem is that there aren’t many commercial
scale chemical recycling plants out there.
And the companies mostly keep their data to themselves,
which makes the research around it really hard to verify.
"Unless a study is published in its entirety –
full transparency – for everyone to really look at in detail,
then I don’t think anyone should take it seriously."
This is Simon Hann. In 2020, he conducted a meta-study on
chemical recycling and since then has peer-reviewed
a lot of studies from companies and independent bodies.
"The main advantage at the moment of pyrolysis
is that it's better than incineration at the moment.
Now, obviously incinerating plastics is just
about the worst thing you can do anyway.
So, that is quite a low bar to reach.
We’ve seen some studies that suggest that if you can mechanically recycle,
then chemical recycling doesn’t tend
to be better than that.
But there are some trade-offs here, because
your end product from chemical recycling
is equivalent to virgin.
So it can be used in more applications"
This is supported by a study that assumed the best
performance possible for different
types of chemical recycling
based on their chemical formulas.
Compared to incineration, chemical recycling
offers greenhouse gas savings of up to 4kg of CO2.
But mechanical recycling, still performs way better
environmentally because it doesn’t require as much energy.
"Chemical recycling really only makes sense environmentally
when you use it instead of burning the plastics
and when you deal with those types of plastic
that wouldn’t be otherwise recyclable."
Another factor is efficiency.
Today, according to Simon Hann, pyrolysis plants
lose between 20 to 50 percent of their input material.
So, for one ton of virgin-like pyrolysis oil, you need up to
two tons of input material.
[Reporter] "Would it also work by just throwing in post-consumer plastic?
"No. The problem is: it doesn't matter what new raw materials you produce,
whether it's a sack of carbon or our oil –
what everyone wants is consistency.
What comes out at the end must be consistent.
And the nice thing about tires is – a tire is a tire.
When you get those yellow bags or post-consumer waste,
it’s literally a huge mixed bag that changes every day.
That means every day a different oil and a different solid is created.
How can you manufacture products with that?"
There are other players in the market like Quantafuel in Denmark or OMV in Austria that beg to differ.
They are trying chemical recycling
with postconsumer plastic waste,
but it also needs to be carefully sorted
before it goes into the plants.
In some ways those processes
aren’t fully developed as of now.
But back to our tires in Germany...
"After one hour in that tower, the rubber
turns into this carbon black.
And it’s basically like coal and goes back into tire production.
This is what tires are made of, like 40 percent
of the tire is so-called carbon black.
And as the name suggests,
it turns everything quite black."
But there is more.
Apart from the gas and the carbon black…
"…you also get this: pyrolysis oil.
It's very similar to crude oil, and when you smell it...
It really also smells like gasoline...
But you can basically make any plastic you want out of it,
it needs a little more processing."
In this case, the processing could be done by
German chemical behemoth BASF.
As of now, they are just blending it with
virgin crude oil in such small quantities
that the lesser quality doesn’t really matter that much.
But of course, all these extra steps cost money.
Estimates range from two to four times
the cost of virgin crude oil.
"We are at a starting point here, and
also, the market needs to develop."
This is Jasmin Beckenbach.
A team lead at BASF's ChemCycling Project.
"From a technical point of view, there will be limitations.
You cannot have a 100 percent closed-loop,
we always will need to have some fossil resources.
And also technologically we need to
develop the processes and scale-up possibilities."
So far, BASF customers have used
pyrolysis oil in the production of refrigerator parts,
food packaging
and Styrofoam boxes.
"So, it’s possible to recycle stuff chemically
that can’t be recycled mechanically.
That's already an improvement, because
it saves some virgin crude oil.
But what does that mean in terms of
tackling the plastic crisis?"
Let's look at Europe for that.
In 2020, Europeans collected 29.5 million tons of plastic waste.
Of that about 35% was effectively recycled,
23% ended up in landfills
and 42% went into energy recovery.
And most of what went into energy recovery –
about 8 million tons of plastic –
could, in theory, be chemically recycled.
In Europe alone!
"The technology does make sense.
Because it can recycle stuff that we couldn’t
otherwise and that’s better for the environment.
But only compared to simply burning plastic.
That's a pretty low bar.
I mean anything is basically better than incineration…"
Chemical recycling is not a silver bullet.
We still need to think about how we can
avoid plastic waste in the first place.
"And the plastic-producing industry should
start focusing on plastics that are easier to recycle.
In the best case: mechanically, because that's
the most environmentally-friendly recycling method that we have today!
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