January 27, 2025
Resonac Corporation (President: Hidehito Takahashi) has been selected for the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization’s “Green Innovation Fund Project / Development of Plastic Raw Material Manufacturing Technology Using CO2, etc.*1” with its proposal for “The Development of Chemical Recycling Technology to Produce Basic Chemicals from Mixed Plastic Wastes”. This proposal aims to respond to the Green Innovation Fund’s additional public invitation for projects to establish technology for producing raw materials for plastics without relying on fossil resources, contributing to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Today, we announce that the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (hereinafter “NEDO”) has publicly disclosed the acceptance of Resonac’s proposal (hereinafter “the project”).
NEDO’s Green Innovation Fund Project (hereinafter “the GI Fund”) was established as a project of NEDO by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2021, with a total budget of 2 trillion yen, to significantly accelerate innovations necessary for the structural transformation and bold investments in the energy and industrial sectors to achieve the Japanese government’s goal of “carbon neutrality by 2050.”
The Project is expected to run for a maximum of nine years from FY2024 to FY2032. It aims to establish chemical recycling technology that directly converts and recycles used plastics, which are typically disposed of in a mixed state (such as packaging), into basic chemicals such as ethylene, propylene, and benzene without the need for advanced sorting. This will further expand and promote the effective utilization of valuable carbon resources in used plastics, while also switching the raw materials and manufacturing processes of basic chemicals, which are currently derived mainly from fossil resources, thereby contributing to the realization of a resource-circulating society and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
About the project
Research and development subject:
Development of technology for manufacturing chemicals from used plastics and rubber; Development of technology for producing basic chemicals from mixed plastics.
Background:
In the recycling of used plastics, existing methods have primarily focused on recycling separated or single-type plastics, which account for 1.77 million tons, or 21% of the total amount of used plastics disposed of in 2021. The remaining mixed plastics have mainly undergone thermal recycling. The separation of plastics incurs high costs, and many plastics are difficult to separate, making it highly desirable to establish technologies for recycling mixed plastics without separation to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Research and development overview:
The project aims to develop pyrolysis technology that directly converts mixed plastics, which make up a significant portion of used plastics, into valuable basic chemicals such as lower olefins*2 and benzene with a yield of over 60%, while keeping CO2 emissions during production below 0.8 kg-CO2/kg-olefin. The project will utilize, for example, microwave heating and conduct pyrolysis at a demonstration scale of several thousand tons per year, aiming to establish technology that can handle a variety of used plastics. Initial work will involve selecting decomposition processes and reactor types at laboratory and bench scales (small amount trial production), followed by pilot (medium amount trial production) and large-scale demonstration phases to optimize operation conditions. Additionally, potential challenges arising during future commercialization will be identified and addressed concurrently.
Project scale (scheduled):
Total: Approximately 11.8 billion yen
Support provided by the GI Fund: Approximately 8 billion yen
Project duration (scheduled):
FY2024 to FY2032
For more details, please refer to the materials released by NEDO (Japanese).