Mr. Shah, pyrolysis oil is often seen as a key enabler of the circular economy—where do we stand today in terms of industrial-scale adoption, and what are the biggest hurdles to scaling it further?
Pyrolysis has moved well beyond the purely experimental stage. We already see industrial plants in operation, and there is a clear commitment across the value chain to increase volumes. But compared to the overall plastics market, we are still at a very early stage—recycled feedstocks account for only a small fraction of total production today.
For large-scale adoption, we need to reliably meet the strict specifications of existing assets like steam crackers
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In other words, scaling pyrolysis is less about building more capacity and more about ensuring that the output is stable, predictable, and compatible with today’s infrastructure.
»Because our solutions are designed as modular systems, they can often be implemented with relatively limited changes to existing plants«
Nirav Shah Global Director Re-refining & Re-cycling, Houston, Texas.
Evonik is positioning Purocel as a specialized adsorbents & catalysts for upgrading pyrolysis oil. What differentiates your technology from other approaches on the market, and what tangible benefits does it offer to refineries and chemical producers?
The key differentiator is that we focus very specifically on the impurities that limit the use of pyrolysis oil in downstream processes. Steam cracker operators work with very tight quality requirements, so even small amounts of contaminants can be a real issue.
With our Purocel technology, we combine catalytic and adsorption steps to remove these impurities efficiently.
For example, one of our solutions decomposes chloride from the organic compounds and then adsorbs it, which allows us to remove significantly more chlorides than conventional approaches. Additionally, we offer solutions to remove silicon very effectively without hydrogenation.
For our customers, the benefit is quite practical: they can integrate pyrolysis oil more reliably into existing processes without compromising safety or performance. And because our solutions are designed as modular systems, they can often be implemented with relatively limited changes to existing plants and also with flexibility to scale it up quickly
Many companies highlight chemical recycling as a future solution. From your perspective, what is the economic outlook—when will pyrolysis oil become competitive with fossil feedstocks, even without regulatory support?
At the moment, economics and technology are closely linked. High-quality feedstock is essential and achieving that quality still requires additional processing steps. That does have an impact on cost.
However, we are already seeing that improving the quality of pyrolysis oil—so that it can be used in standard infrastructure—reduces complexity and makes the overall system more efficient. Technologies that enable better purification and integration are therefore a key lever for improving the economics.
In the long term, competitiveness will come from a combination of scale, improved process efficiency, and better integration into existing value chains. The more we can treat pyrolysis oil like a standard feedstock, the closer we get to that tipping point.