The first processing trial run at Neste’s refinery in Porvoo, Finland, using pyrolysis oil derived from liquefied discarded tires has now been successfully concluded, Neste announced today.
The trial was conducted to assess the feasibility of potentially broadening the supply of waste suitable for recycling into high-quality feedstock for new plastics and chemicals. The material produced by Neste in the processing run based on pyrolysis oil produced from discarded tires fully met the relevant quality requirements, thus validating the suitability of chemical recycling for processing waste materials beyond plastics.
Neste sourced the pyrolysis oil from Scandinavian Enviro Systems, a Swedish company developing technologies to recover materials from end-of-life products. Just as with hard-to-recycle plastic waste, huge numbers of tires today end up in landfills or are incinerated at the end of their useful life.
Made from a mix of several materials, tires are generally unsuited for mechanical recycling. Scandinavian Enviro Systems has therefore developed a pyrolysis technology for extracting carbon black and oil from these end-of-life tires.
“The beauty of chemical recycling is that it can process hard-to-recycle plastic waste. But it’s not limited to that,” explained Andreas Teir, who is in charge of Neste’s raw materials supply for chemical recycling. “With discarded tires currently often facing a fate similar to plastic waste, we consider chemical recycling a valid addition when it comes to changing the linear life cycle of tires into a circular one. Thanks to our supplier Enviro Systems, we were able to prove that with our recent processing run.”
In the past, Neste successfully conducted several processing runs with liquefied waste plastic. These runs built the basis for Neste’s decision to invest into large-scale capacities for chemical recycling at the company’s site in Porvoo, Finland. The facilities being built are expected to be finished in the course of 2025 and will be able to process 150,000 tons of liquefied waste plastic per year. They are part of project PULSE, which is funded by the European Union through the EU Innovation Fund.
The company’s ambition is to make the Porvoo oil refinery in Finland the most sustainable refinery in Europe by 2030. Neste is committed to reaching carbon-neutral production by 2035, and will reduce the carbon emission intensity of sold products by 50% by 2040. The company has consistently been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices and the Global 100 list of the world’s most sustainable companies.