A New Twist for Refineries -- Reusing Plastic

Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The focus on the waste stream so far in the energy transition has been on using landfill gas or farm waste as a feedstock at refineries, but now Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) (Houston, Texas) says it can do the same with waste plastics, creating something of a circular economy.

The waste plastic stream is a lingering concern for environmental advocates worried about its long-term presence and accumulation both on and offshore. Phillips 66 says it may have a solution.

"Phillips 66 is committed to keeping plastics out of the environment and driving toward a more circular economy where plastics packaging is reused, recycled or recovered," said Zhanna Golodryga, an executive vice president of emerging energy and sustainability at Phillips 66.

The company said Wednesday it received international certification to use waste plastics as the feedstock at its Sweeny refinery for some of the precursors needed to make new plastics, creating a circular economy in the hard-to-address waste stream.

The company's Sweeny refinery, located about 60 miles southwest of Houston, runs mostly heavy, sour crude -- a type not commonly found in the United States -- to produce fuels and petrochemical feedstock. Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Refinery Plant Database can click here for the plant profile.

A report from Greenpeace last year found that about 95% of the plastics used in common household products winds up in a landfill because they're too complex to recycle. If only 5% of total plastics are recycled, that means about 5 million tons of plastic is going into the waste stream each year.

That was enough for legislators in California to examine whether fossil fuel and petrochemical companies that make plastic were being deceptive with recycling claims. End users, however, are starting to pay attention. Beverage maker Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) (Atlanta, Georgia), for example, will start making a clear plastic for its Sprite line that's supposed to be easier to recycle than the signature green bottle.

Nevertheless, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates global plastic use and waste could triple by 2060. AMP Robotics (Louisville, Colorado), however, believes its artificial intelligence could turn that waste stream into a $2 billion industry through the resale of chemicals and polymer blends needed for end users.

Utilizing plastics at the refinery level is a novel concept. Most of the recent news during the so-called energy transition has focused on the processing of organic waste.

Most recently, Canada's Irving Oil (Saint John) established a relationship with Anaergia (Burlington, Canada), a company specializing in the processing of organic waste matter from landfills into an end product considered renewable by industry providers.

Irving said it will receive around 350 million cubic feet of renewable natural gas (RNG) per year at its refinery in New Brunswick, Canada's largest.

Anaergia's RNG is sourced from landfill operations. Developers can capture the emissions from the decomposition of organic matter, remove impurities and, in this case, send it on through a pipeline, reducing the need for Irving to draw on conventional natural gas supplies.

Sweeny, which boasts an annual average throughput of 314,000 barrels per day, is the second in the Phillips portfolio to receive certification for a circular economy. Its Humber refinery in the United Kingdom is certified to use cooking oil and food waste.

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