Recent research on using end-of-life plastics to create new virgin plastics (October 2019)
Chalmers University of Technology. (2019, October 18). All plastic waste could become new, high-quality plastic through advanced steam cracking. Retrieved October 22, 2019, from ScienceDaily website:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191018112142.htm
2015, around 350 million tonnes of plastic waste were generated world‐ wide. In total, 14 per cent was collected for material recovery -- 8 per cent was recycled into plastic of lower quality, and 2 per cent to plastics of simi‐ lar quality as the original. Around 4 per cent was lost in the process.
Thunman, H., Berdugo Vilches, T., Seemann, M., Maric, J., Vela, I. C., Pissot, S., & Nguyen, H. N. T. (2019). Circular use of plastics-transformation of existing petrochemical clusters into thermochemical recycling plants with 100% plastics recovery. Sustainable Materials and Technologies, 22, e00124.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.susmat.2019.e00124
Summary of research from 2016, specifically oriented towards replacing oil by biological products:
Morales, M., Ataman, M., Badr, S., Linster, S., Kourlimpinis, I., Papadokonstantakis, S., … Hungerbühler, K. (2016). Sustainability assessment of succinic acid production technologies from biomass using metabolic engineering. Energy & Environmental Science, 9(9), 2794–2805.
https://doi.org/10.1039/C6EE00634E
Siankevich, S., Fei, Z., Scopelliti, R., Jessop, P. G., Zhang, J., Yan, N., & Dyson, P. J. (2016). Direct Conversion of Mono- and Polysaccharides into 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural Using Ionic-Liquid Mixtures. ChemSusChem, 9(16), 2089–2096.
https://doi.org/10.1002/cssc.201600313
Trade-off advantages and disadvantages usage of lignine in bio-refineries:
Strassberger, Z., Tanase, S., & Rothenberg, G. (2014). The pros and cons of lignin valorisation in an integrated biorefinery. RSC Advances, 4(48), 25310–25318.
https://doi.org/10.1039/C4RA04747H
Now, let us consider the role that biomass can play in this scenario, taking into account the following five points:
Gas is cheap and currently plentiful, but its transportation is costly.
Biomass differs from crude oil and gas because it is over-functionalized and has a high oxygen content.
Biomass is available practically worldwide, on varying scales.
Unlike fossil hydrocarbons, biomass is renewable on a human timescale, but its large-scale cultivation raises ecolog- ical and economical concerns.
Over 93 vol% of all the crude oil and gas processed today are converted into energy and fuels. All the bulk chemicals, polymers, ne-chemicals and pharmaceuticals account for less than 7%
Based on these facts, we can see that it makes much more sense to convert biomass into chemicals than into energy.
Review biorefineries vs. petrochemical refineries:
de Jong, E., & Jungmeier, G. (2015). Biorefinery Concepts in Comparison to Petrochemical Refineries. In Industrial Biorefineries & White Biotechnology (pp. 3–33).
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63453-5.00001-X
"it might be still very attractive to integrate biomass processing in traditional refineries as a way to upgrade conventional refineries and this represents a modern systems version of a retrofit problem. " (p 20)
"The oil and syngas platforms in particular represent a number of opportunities of processing biomass or biomass-derived intermediates by utilizing existing petrochemical facilities, such as oil cracking, hydrotreating, gasification, and chemical synthesis. The resulting products include gasoline, diesel, olefins, alcohols, acids, waxes, and many other commodity chemicals derivable from syngas." (p 20)
"Insofar biorefineries create a process chain that adds biomass as a resource alternative to coal, crude oil, or natural gas in order to create C2-, C3-, or C4-base chemical platforms" (p 20)
"The increased usage of shale gas changes the ratio between C2, C3, and C4 building blocks produced and might create extra potential for biomass-derived C4 building blocks (e.g., succinic acid and butanediol)"
Technical review of chemical pathways starting from lignine (Universite Clermont-Auvergne):
Tribot, A., Amer, G., Abdou Alio, M., De Baynast, H., Delattre, C., Pons, A., … Dussap, C.-G. (2019). Wood-lignin: Supply, extraction processes and use as bio-based material. European Polymer Journal, 112.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2019.01.007
Interesting international platform: Energy Agency - Bioenergy Task 42', workprogramme of the coming years: