Michigan headquartered petrochemicals giant, Dow, allies with the world’s leading low-carbon emission technology provider, Haldor Topsoe, to set up a top-class plastic processing unit to convert the waste plastics, that are otherwise dumped into landfills or incinerated, to circular polypropylene.
The unit will be designed with Dow’s engineering expertise while Haldor Topsoe’s will be responsible for providing its recycling technology to enable commercial-scale purification of feedstocks extracted from waste plastics to deliver circular plastics. The initial plan encompasses a 10,000 tons per year Market Development unit at Dow’s industrial site in Terneuzen, the Netherlands. Once the technology validation is accomplished at this site, the companies will be expanding the production scale to fulfil the growing polypropylene demand from the end-user sectors.
Polypropylene is a hard and crystalline thermoplastic that is produced from the addition polymerization of propylene monomeric units. Its applications cover a broad range of end-user sectors including packaging, automobile, electronics and home appliances, construction, and healthcare equipment.
The plastic waste generation across the globe touches a value of 300 million tonnes annually which on incineration produce large amounts of greenhouse gases. As per ChemAnalyst, the production of circular plastics has high prospects in the coming years owing to the growing awareness among the masses, and continuing pressure from shifting government policies towards sustainability. The establishment of industrial-scale capacities will cater to the firm demand in the downstream sectors with sufficient circular polypropylene supplies. It will also aid the company in establishing the circular economy and contributing to reducing the greenhouse emissions on the planet.
