PS recycling to compete with virgin even with drastically low crude prices – Agilyx exec

Ciaran Tyler

06-Aug-2019

LONDON (ICIS)–At the right scale, chemical recycling technology for polystyrene (PS) is now far more efficient and cost effective than virgin production, and can lead the way for chemically recycling polymers in the future, according to Bill Cooper, the senior vice president of strategy and development at one of the world’s leading chemical recycling firms, Agilyx.

Bill Cooper. Source: Agilyx

In early July, Agilyx announced that it would be collaborating with Styrenics Circular Solutions (SCS) participants INEOS Styrolution and Trinseo to set up the first commercial scale PS chemical recycling facility in Europe in the near future.

Since the EU launched its action plan for a circular economy in 2015, greater emphasis and research has gone into chemical recycling as a potential solution for one aspect of developing a more circular economy.

Feeding the machine
However, a number of issues need to be addressed before chemical recycling is able to scale up to commercial operations in the EU, but feedstock flexibility is something Agilyx has claimed to have mostly solved.

“We can take PS and the form doesn’t matter. The majority of material we process is foam [extruded polystyrene (XPS), expandable polystyrene (EPS)] but we can process rigid [general purpose PS, high impact PS] as well,” Cooper commented.

“We can handle food contamination and other organic contaminants; we take a lot of material from the meat and agriculture industry, and it is not a problem for our system… [and] we have developed a pathway for polyethylene [PE] and polypropylene [PP] pathways… and [for] PET [polyethylene terephthalate] as well,” he added.

Although being able to process contaminated, post-consumer PS waste as well as commercial waste is an advantage, consistent yields of recycled styrene and PS from the proposed plant could be an issue.

Certain types of PS contain a significant level of other chemicals and polymers. For example, some grades of HIPS can contain up to 15% polybutadiene, limiting the possible PS yields when chemically recycled.

“The yield question is hard to answer because of the potential variants in feedstock. If you have a lot of organic or other contamination by weight, yields can change substantially… [but our] yield is sufficient to compete on an economic basis with virgin production of monomer,” Cooper said.

The chemical recycling plant already up and running in the US employs pyrolysis technology, whereby PS is heated in the absence of oxygen in a reactor, after it has been prepared.

The reactor heats the PS feedstock to the point at which it depolymerises and turns into a gas. The gas component is extracted and rapidly cooled, forming a type of oil which has a high ratio of styrene in it.

The oil requires further cleaning or processing before then being re-polymerised into commercial grades of PS again.

Although Cooper was reluctant to share exact yield rates, the average breakdown of the three product streams from the plant was telling.

“We have three product streams… and the volumes will depend on how much contamination in the feedstock there is. Broadly defined, the oil [mostly styrene] is 70% plus gas 20% and char [primarily carbon] is 5-10%,” the senior vice president commented.

Much of the gas produced is of smaller carbon chains, with propylene often one of the key components.

The gas can be used to power the plant itself for energy or heat generation, but Cooper insists that with the right partners, potential byproducts such as butadiene (BD) and propylene can be cleaned and used to make PP or commercial grade BD, for example.

“Depending on the pathway, [the process has a] 50-70% lower carbon footprint than virgin manufacturing,” Cooper stated.

A press release in July said the commercial plant planned for Europe would be able to process up to 50 tonnes of PS feedstock per day, once fully operational.

If the yield averages for the styrene monomer oil stream are close to 70%, that means production capacity of recycled styrene at the chemical recycling plant could be less than 13,000 tonnes/year.

To put that in context, the nameplate capacity of styrene plants in Europe alone is over 5m tonnes for 2019, according to ICIS data.

That means Agilyx’s plant would likely represent less than 0.5% of total European styrene capacity, once completed and fully ramped up.

The scale of the virgin production industry for both monomers and polymers is simply daunting compared to plans for chemical recycling facilities over the coming years.

In recent months, some participants in the European PS market have been sceptical of how successful chemical recycling operations will be as customers further down the value chain look for alternative polymers and materials before the EU wide single-use plastics ban comes into effect in 2021 for a number of applications.

Some food-packaging producers in recent years have opted to use certain PET grades, even for segments traditionally dominated by PS, such as yoghurt pots.

According to some converters and distributors, supermarkets and other large buyers of end-use products have been favouring alternative materials and polymers to PS due to an industry-wide perception that PS is not widely or easily recycled.

This bearish sentiment has only increased since the summer of 2018, when the EU first announced it was seeking to eliminate a number of single-use plastics.

The proposal has since passed through the political institutions of the EU and is set to come into force in 2021.

Sizeable countries such as France have already banned a number of single-use plastic items and the UK is set to ban a range of single-use plastics in 2020, one year ahead of the bloc.

The uphill battle to change perceptions around PS is something Agilyx has been involved in in the US.

“We have been fighting legislation in the US… We have been working with our partners to change the perception of polystyrene to ensure legislation doesn’t ban a material that can be recycled,” Cooper commented.

“Our partners believe there is time to build infrastructure for chemical recycling to stem a decline in market share or a shift to other polymers,” he added.

“If they started 10 years ago, it would be a much different conversation but the technology didn’t exist 10 years ago.

“It’s not a challenge that is particular to PS. If the EU or specific countries or states in the US are to enable large scale recycling of plastics, a lot of infrastructural change will need to take place, or alternatively, existing infrastructure will need to be utilised differently,” he said.

The uphill battle does not just come from a shrinking PS market in Europe, but also from obtaining a consistent level of PS feedstock for the chemical plant, a problem Agillyx has faced in the US market.

“We faced the challenge in Portland with the current plant in getting enough PS feedstock through vertical  integration into feedstock aggregation,” Cooper stated.

The company has had to adopt and develop a number of initiatives in the US to ensure waste PS is obtained to keep efficiently feeding the plant to produce recycled material.

“[We’ve been using] direct consumer drop-off, school programmes, take-back programmes in retail locations, working with municipalities, waste companies, commercial industrial partners… [and] environmental groups to obtain more material.”

The company also plans to work more with companies dealing with landfill and waste-to-energy facilities to “increase volumes of PS feedstock”, Cooper said.

The problems Agilyx faces in obtaining constant feedstock for its plant in the US is likely to recur in Europe.

A lack of unified recycling infrastructure and myriad local, state, national and EU level regulations potentially overlapping could hinder waste PS availability.

In some countries, municipalities have significant sway over the local recycling regime relating to recycling rates, and acceptability of certain polymers for recycling can vary from town to town.

“[It] hurts and helps [that PS is] not [widely] recycled. It’s harder to obtain post-consumer PS, but helps in the fact that people want to participate in the solution for it,” Cooper commented.

Whether Agilyx and its partners can ensure enough supply of waste PS to feed the proposed chemical recycling plant in Europe by the time the plant is built will be a key hurdle to overcome.

The challenge will likely involve significant time, money and effort to get as many supply routes established across a number of countries so the reactor can run at consistently high rates.

Pricing
Cooper was less concerned with current or future styrene or PS prices in Europe.

PS prices have dropped significantly over the last few months amid styrene supply length upstream and tepid demand in the derivative PS and EPS markets as EU macroeconomic growth slows to a standstill.

Agilyx does not rely on any subsidies, credits or other incentives to function and according to Cooper, the plant that is already operational in the US can compete with all pathways relating to virgin production, at the right scale.

Although styrene and PS prices are somewhat insulated from upstream crude price fluctuations, Cooper claims, “depending on the pathway and scale of the facilities, we can compete down to $30-40 per barrel of oil”.

Chemical recycling is a relatively new technology and commercial success is far from certain.

The EU has passed regulations over the last year to try to ensure that certain plastic packaging contains a high level of recycled content by 2025.

The scale of the infrastructure needed to achieve this cannot be overstated.

Not simply for the number of commercial scale chemical-recycling plants needed to meet this goal, but also for the revolution in waste polymer collecting and sorting that would be required to feed the wave of new recycling plants anticipated over the coming decades.

Agilyx’s plant might be a step in the right direction, but dozens of similar sized units would likely need to be built in Europe in the coming years to even make a small dent in virgin styrene and PS production.

With Agilyx’s plant in the US sometimes struggling to ensure waste PS feedstock is readily available for recycling, after operating for a number of years already, it is still not clear how successful operations in the EU will be once they ramp up.

Despite the backing of large PS producers in Europe, time is against them as some participants downstream continue to look for alternative materials, seeing little choice as updated EU regulations banning or limiting the use of certain non-recycled polymers fast approaches.

Interview article by Ciaran Tyler

(Clarification: recasts 50th paragraph)

READ MORE

Global News + ICIS Chemical Business (ICB)

See the full picture, with unlimited access to ICIS chemicals news across all markets and regions, plus ICB, the industry-leading magazine for the chemicals industry.

Contact us

Now, more than ever, dynamic insights are key to navigating complex, volatile commodity markets. Access to expert insights on the latest industry developments and tracking market changes are vital in making sustainable business decisions.

Want to learn about how we can work together to bring you actionable insight and support your business decisions?

Need Help?

Need Help?