BASF and New Energy, a Hungarian technology company specialised in the pyrolysis of waste tires have signed an uptake supply agreement under which New Energy will supply BASF with up to 4,000 tonnes/year of pyrolysis oil derived from waste tires, the companies announced in a joint statement released yesterday.
The deal is part of BASF’s ChemCycling project, launched in 2018, which is focussed on chemically reprocessing post-consumer mixed plastic waste, which would otherwise end up in landfill or incineration, on an industrial scale. The technology developed by New Energy allows BASF to expand this focus to end-of-life tires.
“By further broadening our raw material base to waste tires, we can create a new circular value stream. Moreover, we establish a second recycled feedstock in our ChemCycling project with which we can manufacture high- performance products for our customers’ demanding applications,” said Christian Lach, Project Leader ChemCycling at BASF.
Waste tires fall within the definition of post-consumer plastic waste, according to DIN EN ISO 14021:2016-07.
“We spent almost a decade to develop and optimise our technology and are now successfully operating an industrial-scale plant which turns waste tires into secondary raw materials. This puts us at the forefront when it comes to establishing a circular economy for tires,” Viktor Varadi, CEO of New Energy.
The pyrolysis oil supplied by New Energy is used by BASF for production at Ludwigshafen, thereby replacing fossil resources. The share of recycled raw material is allocated to certain products - Ccycled products - manufactured there, using a third-party audited mass balance approach. The products have the exact same properties as those manufactured from fossil feedstock. Customers can therefore further process them in the same way as conventionally manufactured products and use them in applications with high demands regarding quality and performance, such as automotive parts.
BASF and New Energy are taking the collaboration even further, the companies said, exploring whether New Energy’s pyrolysis technology could be used elsewhere as well. The companies will conduct a joint feasibility study targeting the adaption of the technology to the conversion of other plastic waste streams.