据普氏能源资讯伦敦4月1日消息 能够从塑料废物中回收原油和燃料的新型塑料回收工厂正在加大对全球石油需求预测的压力。
尽管塑料的机械回收已存在多年,但先进或化学处理依赖于热解,催化裂化和气化的组合来产生合成燃料或原料,其可以进料到常规炼油厂中。
人们对一次性塑料制品的抵触情绪日益高涨,尤其是一些公司希望将这些新工厂投入商业规模。奥地利OMV公司的ReOil工艺将废塑料溶解,然后将其裂解成短链“优质”轻质原油。合成原油随后被输送到其Schwechat炼油厂,成为塑料行业的燃料或原料。
OMV首席执行官Rainer Seele在11月的战略报告中称:“这是我有生以来见过的最甜的原油。”这意味着,如果将它引入生产过程,就不会产生SOx和氮氧化物排放。
OMV在其Schwechat炼油厂的试验性ReOil工厂,每小时可从100公斤废弃塑料中生产100升合成原油。商业工厂则计划将把这一过程扩大到每小时2000公斤。
芬兰Neste是世界上最大的可再生柴油废料生产商,该公司也在研究将液化塑料废料转化为原材料的方法,并计划在今年进行工业规模的试验。Neste希望到2030年每年处理100多万吨塑料垃圾。
在美国,BP已同意从俄亥俄州的塑料燃料制造商RES Polyflow购买至多1600万加仑/年的超低硫柴油和石脑油混合燃料库存。该公司的首个商业化生产工厂将于今年投产,旨在处理低价值的混合塑料垃圾,这些垃圾通常会被填埋或污染环境。
普氏预测,考虑到塑料回收的预期数量增长,到2030年再生塑料将占全球未开发聚合物总需求的12%以上,高于2015年的7%。
吴慧丹 摘译自 普氏能源资讯
原文如下:
New plastics-to-fuel plants tighten squeeze on oil demand outlook
A new breed of plastic recycling plants capable of recovering crude and fuels from plastic waste is piling more pressure on global oil demand forecasts.
While mechanical recycling of plastics has been around for years, advanced or chemical processing relies on combinations of pyrolysis, catalytic cracking and gasification to create synthetic fuels or feedstocks which can be fed into a conventional refinery.
The growing backlash against single-use plastics, in particular, has seen a number of companies looking to launch these new plants at commercial scale. Austrian company OMV's ReOil process dissolves and then cracks waste plastics into a short-chain "premium" light crude. The synthetic crude is then channeled into its Schwechat refinery to become fuel or feedstock for the plastics industry.
"It is the sweetest crude oil that I have ever seen in my life," OMV's CEO Rainer Seele said in a November strategy presentation. "That means that if you introduce it into the process, you would have no SOx and no NOX emissions."
OMV's pilot ReOil plant at it Schwechat refinery can produce up to 100 liters of synthetic crude per hour from 100 kilograms of waste plastic. Plans for a commercial plant will scale up the process to 2,000 kg/hour of used plastic.
Finland's Neste, the world's biggest producer of renewable diesel from waste, is also developing ways to turn liquefied plastic waste into a raw material, with plans to proceed to an industrial-scale trial this year. Neste hopes to process more than 1 million mt/year of plastic waste by 2030.
In the US, BP has agreed to buy up to 16 million gallons/year of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel and naphtha blendstocks from Ohio-based plastics-to-fuel maker RES Polyflow. The company's first commercial production plant, due on stream this year, is designed to tackle low-value, mixed plastic waste which typically ends up in landfills or fouling the environment.
Given the expected volume growth in plastic recycling, S&P Global Platts Analytics forecasts that more than 12% of total global virgin polymer demand will be made up of recycled plastics in 2030, up from 7% in 2015.