Shell uses plastic waste to produce chemicals
Today Shell announced it has successfully made high-end chemicals using a liquid feedstock made from plastic waste. The technique, known as pyrolysis, is considered a breakthrough for hard-to-recycle plastics and advances Shell’s ambition to use one million tonnes of plastic waste a year in its global chemicals plants by 2025.
“This makes sense for the environment and our business,” said Thomas Casparie, Executive Vice President of Shell’s global chemicals business. “We want to take waste plastics that are tough to recycle by traditional methods and turn them back into chemicals – creating a circle. These chemicals will meet our customers’ growing demands for high quality and sustainable products.”
Atlanta-based Nexus Fuels LLC recently supplied its first cargo of pyrolysis liquid to Shell’s chemical plant in Norco, Louisiana, USA where it was made into chemicals that are the raw materials for everyday items. Shell is working with multiple companies who collect and transform plastic waste in order to scale this solution to industrial and profitable quantities across its chemicals plants - in Asia, Europe and North America.
Shell is a founding member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW). This not-for-profit organisation is bringing together top minds from across the plastics value chain (chemical and plastic manufacturers, consumer goods companies, retailers, converters and waste management companies) and partnering with the financial community, governments and civil society. The AEPW has committed $1.5 billion over the next five years to help end plastic waste in the environment.
Shell is also working with its retail, business fuels and lubricants customers to help reduce, reuse and recycle plastic packaging.
Enquiries:
Notes to Editors
- Pyrolysis is a chemical recycling process of heating plastic waste without oxygen such that it breaks down the longer chain polymers into shorter chain materials. These products can then be further processed into chemicals feedstocks or fuels. Pyrolysis can be more effective than the traditional mechanical recycling process of melting as it does not degrade the quality of the final plastic and requires less intensive sorting of the initial waste.
About Shell
- Shell makes chemicals that support modern life. It may not be obvious, but they are used in thousands of products people use every day - from furniture, medical equipment, clothes and refrigerators, to computers and smart phones. Window frames, pipes, roofing, mattresses, vehicle parts and tyres. Packaging, shampoos and fertilisers. These products contribute to society’s ability to live, work and play.
- Shell manufactures base chemicals - ethylene, propylene and aromatics – using oil and gas as feedstock. We also make intermediates, such as mono ethylene glycol (MEG), polyols and alpha olefins, and certain performance products, such as polyethylene.
- Shell’s global chemicals business sells around 18 million metric tons of petrochemicals per year to over 1000 industrial customers.
- Shell’s world-class integrated refining and chemicals plants are in Asia-Pacific (Singapore), Europe (the Netherlands), and North America (the US Gulf Coast and Canada).
- Shell operates three major petrochemical facilities in the USA at Deer Park, Texas; Norco and Geismar in Louisiana; and additional chemicals manufacturing in Canada at Scotford and Sarnia.
- We draw strength from being part of an integrated energy company; we benefit from shared infrastructures, access to a variety of feedstocks, and deep manufacturing and processing expertise. This gives Shell a competitive advantage over stand-alone chemicals companies.
- References to the expressions “Shell”, “Shell’s chemicals business” or “Shell’s chemical plants around the world” refer to multiple companies that are part of the Shell Group that are engaged in chemical or related businesses. Each of the companies that make up the Shell Group of companies is an independent entity and has its own separate identity
- For more details, visit www.shell.com/chemicals.
To download a supporting graphic please click here.
More information can be found in the video and animation.
Plastic Waste to Chemicals
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Read the transcript
Title: Shell Plastics Video
Description:
Video showing how Shell is using plastic waste to create a valuable base chemical for feedstock.
Shell is working with companies in the U.S. to source plastic waste and using a process called pyrolysis, is turning this waste into an oil that will be used to create a feedstock for future products.
Shell Plastic waste to video Video Transcript
[Background music plays]
Shell music bed from Creative Hub: Inspiring_Confident_A_Main_Track
[Video Sequence]
Combination of stock videos that support the recycling, plastic waste messaging as well as owned video footage of Norco Facility and Nexus Fuels facility.
[Text displays]
Shell.com
[Transcript]
If you think about it,
ideas can be a form of energy.
They can drive action. Spur results.
Even make the world a better place.
And Shell is part of such an idea:
Turning plastic waste into something valuable – raw materials for chemicals.
It takes innovation and commitment to bring that idea to life.
We have both.
We’re teaming up with innovative companies that collect and transform plastic waste to liquid.
We then use it to produce chemicals.
Chemicals used by our customers to make things like furniture, medical equipment, home appliances, and even smartphones.
It’s not just an idea on paper:
We are making this a reality today at our Norco chemical plant in the United States.
This process is unlocking the potential of plastic waste to create a circular value chain
And it’s our global ambition to use 1 million tonnes of recycled plastic waste in our chemical plants by 2025
Yes, ideas can be a form of energy.
And when we all work together, these ideas have the power to bring about significant change.
The Circular Process of Recycling Plastic Waste
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Read the transcript
Title: Project Yellow
Description: A short animation depicting the circular process of recycling plastic waste.
Duration: 1:10
[Animation]
A rotating circular band appears on screen which is divided in to segments with pointers directed to the right indicating a constantly moving circular process. There is text in the centre.
[On Screen text]
Shell is using a feedstock made from plastic waste to create chemicals.
[Animation]
Appearing clockwise in each segment of the circular band, an image appears:
Segment 1 – a car, a football, a plastic bottle, a plastic bag and a laptop.
Segment 2 – A refuse disposal truck.
Segment 3 – Image of a recycling plant.
Segment 4 – Image of a Shell chemicals plant.
Segment 5 – molecular structure with 3 branches coming off it, one to a t-shirt, one to a tyre and one to a plastic bottle.
[On screen text]
How does the process work?
[Animation]
The screen zooms in to the segment 1 image and the image changes to a ‘life’ scene of a house, car, people walking, a male on a bike, children playing football, a high rise building and an aeroplane in the sky.
[On screen text]
Plastics are used in the home, hospitals, electronics, construction, transport, agriculture and sport.
[Animation]
This image reverts back to the original composition of a car, a football, a plastic bottle, a plastic bag and a laptop.
The screen then zooms in to the image of the refuse truck which picks up a refuse bin, tips the contents in to the truck and then drives away.
[On screen text]
Plastic waste is collected and sorted.
[Animation]
The refuse truck drives towards the recycling plant image.
[On screen text]
The plastic waste is chemically recycled…..
[Animation]
The image of the recycling plant enlarges on screen as arrows move from left to right above the building.
[On screen text]
…using a special heating process called pyrolysis, turning it into a liquid.
[Animation]
The image of a Shell chemicals plant appears on screen.
[On screen text]
This liquid is used in a cracker at a Shell chemicals plant.
[Animation]
Multiple images of rotating molecular structures appear on screen.
[On screen text]
This produces a range of chemicals.
These are used by customers to make thousands of final products we see every day, including plastics.
[Animation]
Around one of the molecular structures appears images of a t-shirt, a laptop, a tyre, a can of paint and a paintbrush, a plastic bottle and a washing machine.
The screen zooms out to show the circular process image depicted at the beginning of the video.
This then fades out.
[On screen text]
Shell’s ambition is to use one million tonnes of plastic waste a year in its global chemical plants by 2025.
[Animation]
A closing screen shows the Shell pectin.
