{"id":160908,"date":"2025-04-03T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=160908"},"modified":"2025-03-28T14:24:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T13:24:40","slug":"scaling-up-chemical-recycling-omv-successfully-starts-up-new-reoil-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/scaling-up-chemical-recycling-omv-successfully-starts-up-new-reoil-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaling up chemical recycling: OMV successfully starts-up new ReOil\u00ae plant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\u00a9 OMV AG<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Humans produce\u00a0350 million metric tons<\/a>\u00a0of plastic waste each year. That\u2019s more than the weight of every person on Earth\u00a0put together<\/a>. But just\u00a09%<\/a>\u00a0is currently recycled.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasing this percentage is one of the fundamental challenges facing society today, a challenge that demands innovative solutions and the willpower to deliver them at scale.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our ReOil\u00ae technology offers a new way to tackle hard-to-recycle plastic, breaking it down into circular chemicals that can be fed back into new plastic production. At our ReOil plant, we will have a planned capacity to process 16,000 metric tons of end-of-life plastic per year using this innovative method.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how the technology works and why it\u2019s an important development in the wider push towards a circular economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it work?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

ReOil gives post-consumer plastics (or PCPs) a second life, taking them out of waste streams where they would otherwise be incinerated or go to landfill. Primarily, we use PCPs that aren\u2019t suitable for traditional mechanical recycling methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At our ReOil plant, these plastics are processed into pyrolysis oil which is then purified and refined. The oil is sent directly to a different part of the refinery, where it can be turned into monomers like ethylene and propylene. We send these to our customers and partners along the value chain, such as Borealis, to produce brand-new plastics, helping to close the loop in plastic production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crucially, plastics produced from chemically recycled products have the same quality and purity as those produced from fossil resources. That means they can be used in a wide range of applications, including products with high safety requirements like food packaging or medical equipment \u2013 all while reducing the use of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using an innovative technology that reduces the viscosity of molten plastic, ReOil is uniquely scalable compared to other chemical recycling methods.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"OMV
\u00a9 OMV AG<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The ReOil\u00ae plant<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The start-up of our ReOil plant is the latest step in the technology\u2019s long-running development. It builds on the impressive progress already made at our smaller ReOil pilot plant, as well as initial tests made at laboratory scale from as early as 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIts integration within the Schwechat refinery brings other unique advantages,\u201d explains\u00a0Andreas Lechleitner, Senior Expert in Circular Economy Innovation at OMV,<\/strong> \u201cwe leverage infrastructural synergies, ensure the safe handling of pyrolysis oil, and seamlessly integrate it into the material cycle for production of plastic\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manfred Scharner, ReOil Project Director<\/strong>\u00a0adds: \u201cWith this plant, we will prove that ReOil can work at scale. At the same time, just like the pilot plant, it will provide us with important learnings to prepare the technology for the next phase of its development\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The bigger picture<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

With ReOil, we are developing a tangible circular solution to the problem of plastic waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ReOil widens the scope of circular plastic manufacturing. By processing plastics that are not suitable for mechanical recycling, it expands the range of plastics eligible for recycling. The next step is deploying it at scale, which ultimately means more plastic being given a second life and taken out of waste streams. The process is far less carbon-intensive than incineration, the fate of 36% of plastics<\/a> in Austria today.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The plant is able to process 2,000 kilograms of end-of-life plastic every hour, making it one of the biggest chemical recycling plants in Europe. \u00a9 OMV AG<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

From electricity cables to food packaging, plastic plays an important role in many aspects of our lives. But the volume at which we produce it has overwhelmed the systems humanity has in place to dispose of it. With plastic pollution creating a whole host of problems and the threat of climate change escalating, the need for circular solutions has never been more urgent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ReOil cannot singularly solve these challenges but it offers an innovative way to address them. This uniquely scalable technology has the potential to make a massive impact in growing the circular economy and build a more circular world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humans produce\u00a0350 million metric tons\u00a0of plastic waste each year. That\u2019s more than the weight of every person on Earth\u00a0put together. But just\u00a09%\u00a0is currently recycled. Increasing this percentage is one of the fundamental challenges facing society today, a challenge that demands innovative solutions and the willpower to deliver them at scale. Our ReOil\u00ae technology offers a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":160982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Here\u2019s everything you need to know about our new ReOil\u00ae plant","footnotes":""},"categories":[17143],"tags":[17202,10416,7105,14462,10453],"supplier":[1286],"class_list":["post-160908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recycling","tag-chemicalrecycling","tag-circulareconomy","tag-packaging","tag-plasticwaste","tag-recycling","supplier-omv-ag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160908"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=160908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}