Sustainable Development Goals
Project Status:
Completed | Operational 2000 - 2015
Organizations Involved:
Toshiba Corporation, Sapporo Plastics Recycling, Mitsui & Co., Ltd, Sapporo City Government
Services:
Design & Engineering, Component Supply, Operator Training
The Challenge:
Japan faces more challenges than any other developed country, being a small, densely populated, island-bound nation with limited natural resources but a high demand for energy and commodities. Approximately 127 million residents and a large industrial base significantly burden the country in providing sustainable solutions to its waste management problems. Innovative and efficient technologies were required on a massive scale to address the waste disposal issue and partially meet the country's energy and raw material needs.
Japan has pursued a strategy of maximizing the value it recovers from its waste. Since the 1970s, over 1,500 waste-to-energy and resource recovery facilities have been established. With ten million tons of plastic waste produced annually and having the highest calorific value of any waste stream, this oil-rich material was an obvious target for recycling. However, recycling companies must pay heavily to secure the best polyolefin feedstocks (PE, HDPE, LDPE, PP, PS), forcing some smaller recyclers out of business. The challenge in this situation is to process the plastic wastes that others find difficult to recycle or have little commercial value. Last year, 2,750,000 tons of this material had to be landfilled or incinerated due to a lack of re-processing capacity.
The Solution:
Sapporo Plastic Recycling ("SPR") established a fully commercial plastic liquefaction facility on the island of Hokkaido in 2000, capable of recycling over 50 tons of mixed plastic waste per day. From this waste stream, the advanced thermal process recovers light oil, which is used as a chemical feedstock for producing new plastics, medium fuel oil equivalent to diesel, and heavy oil, which is used to generate electricity for export to the grid.
SPR has developed a unique and flexible business model that allows it to recycle not only the 3Ps but also significant loadings of PET and PVC (20% by weight), which are considered contaminants in other liquefaction facilities. The SPR technology features a patented dechlorination process that removes the hydrochloric gas produced by the thermal decomposition of PVC, utilizing water to convert the gas into hydrochloric acid, resulting in only 100 ppm of chlorine in the oil products. Additionally, by undertaking several years of research using a unique catalyst mixed with plastic waste in optimal quantities, SPR has developed a method to handle the benzoic acid produced by the liquefaction of significant loadings of PET without affecting the pH of the oil product.
These advances and numerous other technical refinements have enabled SPR to develop the Cascade Recycling System, which allows plastic from the municipal solid waste stream to be mixed with the rejects and residues from other mechanical or material recycling operations, typically accounting for forty to fifty percent of their throughput. The residue material has a high PET and PVC content, but in the SPR system, it can be blended with the MSW plastic stream at up to forty percent by weight without any adverse effect on the reactor or product quality. Over 100,000 tons of plastic have been recycled since then, and SPR maintains an excellent safety record, consistently producing high-grade products.
Klean Industries Inc., a specialist in petroleum-based waste recycling, plans to roll out facilities in North America and Europe that incorporate the same proven SPR technology. The company is currently in advanced discussions with a global chemical conglomerate, a leading supplier to the plastics manufacturing industry, to establish jointly owned resource recovery facilities at several of its key production sites in North America. This sustainable supply chain solution will provide electricity for their production process, diesel for a large fleet of trucks, and recycled chemical feedstock for producing new plastic while also offsetting carbon dioxide emissions and fulfilling producer responsibility obligations. Klean Industries is also in discussions with other leading stakeholders in the waste and plastic industries and is actively developing new opportunities with qualified partners who can benefit from Klean's portfolio of niche technologies.
The Outcome:
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