Dow, Mura chemical recycling site may be largest in Europe

Böhlen, Germany — Dow Inc. and Mura Technology revealed the site of the companies' new chemical recycling project on Sept. 14, a 120,000 metric ton unit based on Mura's supercritical water technology, set for Dow's central Germany site in Böhlen, near Leipzig.

During a media visit to the site earlier this year, it became clear just how ambitious this project was. Dow and Mura Technology, through a strategy of co-location, are seeking to significantly increase the availability of sustainable polymers based on circular feedstock in the market through chemical recycling.

"So what Dow is doing here together with Mura is scaling up that process and we are talking about really large volumes," said Marc van den Biggelaar, advanced recycling director for Dow. "Böhlen is the first site where you'll see such a large-scale unit."

But not the last.

"The cooperation with Mura is global, so we are talking about a lot more volume and a lot more opportunity globally," he said. The companies are looking at potential opportunities in other geographies, not just in Europe, but also on a global basis to "make that scale-up happen," he added. "And I think that scalability can also contribute to really addressing the huge problem of plastic waste. Because if you don't scale, you don't address the plastic waste issue."

The unit planned at Böhlen is about five times bigger than most plant sizes seen today. Böhlen was selected for this first chemical recycling plant because it has the infrastructure needed for a waste-to-oil project of this size. The cracker here produces a broad range of olefins that are used in the production of chemicals that, among others, are converted at Dow's plastic plants into polyolefin products.

Böhlen is a landlocked site; most of the naphtha it requires is delivered through a 400km pipeline from the harbour of Rostock in the north.

The chemical recycling plant will also contribute to the decarbonization of the operations at Böhlen; according to Mura CEO Steve Mahon, the company has data, which hopefully will be published soon, on the reduction in carbon emissions generated by the naphtha Mura produces compared to fossil naphtha.

It is a significant reduction, he emphasised, and for Dow, it is a welcome additional advantage of the project. Sustainability is an important part of Dow's strategy: Böhlen is already 100 percent powered by renewables, giving the site a substantial advantage regarding its Scope2 CO2 emissions. The company aims as a whole to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

It is worth noting that the partnership between Dow and Mura Technology already extends beyond this initiative. The companies first announced they were partnering last year, with Dow becoming involved in Mura's first HydroPRS plant in Teesside, United Kingdom. Under that agreement, the plant, with an initial recycling capacity of 20,000 metric tons per year, will provide feedstock to Dow for the production of virgin-quality plastic resins.

However, the Böhlen plant is on a different scale, explained Carlo de Smet, the managing director for Dow Olefinverbund. "But it is also about colocation. We look at colocation if the opportunity presents itself, as it can confer a number of integration benefits. Obviously, the space to build a new plant next to the Dow plant or on the Dow premises must be available. It's what made Böhlen the right choice."

Steve Mahon agreed: "It's certainly easier to co-locate with a customer, and co-location with a customer who will be an offtaker of the product at a site like Böhlen, which has space and utilities, is the way to go. And what we're doing is building out that significant scale — the scale that meets the needs of a site like this.

"We don't believe in building lots of little chemical units and then supplying Dow from 50 different sites. We prefer to build large, centralized facilities which are integrated with a large customer like Dow."

According to Dow, partnering with Mura also offered benefits compared to others in the market. For Dow, the ability to scale was a decisive factor. As Marc van den Biggelaar said: "We need to scale up quickly, and we need the right partners to do so. In Mura, we found the right partner to make it happen." A plant this size moreover meets the requirements of scale without either party having to take too much risk, while providing valuable learnings for the future.

Mura has consistently targeted its development at deploying its technology at scale, and it has done so through partnerships, and not just with Dow. Lacking the global engineering resources to design and build its recycling plants at scale, it entered into a partnership with KBR, a major engineering firm to do so. KBR are Mura's exclusive partner on supporting licensees around the world.

Mahon pointed out that Mura's technology is inherently scalable. Originally developed by an Australian firm called Licella Holdings, it utilizes supercritical steam to break down plastics and convert them back into the chemicals and oils from which they were made. The supercritical steam, which is actually water at elevated pressure and temperature, acts like molecular scissors, cutting longer-chain hydrocarbon bonds in the plastic to produce shorter-chain hydrocarbon products, which can be used to produce new, virgin-grade plastics. Called HydroPRS — Hydrothermal Plastic Recycling Solution — it is a chemical recycling process that takes around 25 minutes, and that can be used to recycle all forms of plastic, including flexible and multi-layer plastics, which have previously been deemed "unrecyclable." There is no limit to the number of times the same material can be recycled.

"So it's a different approach than most people take, which is one of just to use heat. Because the supercritical steam is mixing directly with the plastics, it's a very even and intimate mixing, which allows us to scale. You're not heating from the outside walls, you're heating everything equally, making it a very efficient, even process," Mahon said.

"But this process, apart from having very good temperature control and scalability, also yields a very high conversion of plastic molecules — that come in as waste — into a usable product, be it gas or liquid. It's a very efficient process in terms of what is converted into usable product. The technology is the key to enabling us to do this efficiently at scale and economically," he added.

\Real world feedstock input, however, is a sticking point.

The Böhlen plant will collaborate with a local waste management plant that is developing technology to separate the plastics waste from the collected household waste up front, ready for processing in the Mura system. This processing includes an upgrading step by Mura to obtain the quality specification needed, prior to adding the output to the cracker. Amongst others, the chlorine must be separated out. "So, we will be partnering on managing the interface that addresses changes over time, to maintain a stable quality," said Mahon. It is also why the two partners are focusing on larger units: only then can the process become an economically viable one.

"Dow is one of our strategic partners, and the relationship very much one of working together: we'll build out capacity and we'll supply naphtha to Dow at locations around the world," Mahon said. "But Böhlen will be the first one and a landmark site."

The facility is expected to be commissioned in 2025, at which time ISCC certification will also be obtained. On top of that, the companies say they are working to build out up to 600,000 tonnes of globally of advanced recycled volume, which is going to be input for the Dow crackers at the various sites, by 2030.

There have been recycling activities in the past, van den Biggelaar noted, but these have led to downcycling: to lower and lower applications from a performance perspective.

"And that is what we are trying to avoid. We want to bring plastics back into similar or even higher-level applications, to make sure that we become truly circular," he said "To do so, strong partnerships, like this one, are essential."