Japanese chemicals and materials manufacturer Asahi Kasei (Tokyo; www.asahi-kasei.com) said it has concluded a supply agreement with Shell Chemicals (London / UK; www.shell.com) for butadiene derived from plastics waste and biomass. The company plans to use the material to produce and market sustainable solution-polymerised styrene-butadiene rubber (S-SBR) at its plant in Singapore by the end of the current fiscal year ending March 2022.

The company said Shell will produce sustainable butadiene with the mass balance method via two processes at its Bukom Island / Singapore ethylene cracker operated by local subsidiary Shell Eastern Petroleum. The first method converts plastics waste into pyrolysis oil and then feeds it to the naphtha cracker. The second method uses bio-feedstock as a naphtha cracker feed. The integrated plant came online in 2010 and was expanded two years later (see Plasteurope.com of 19.11.2012).

According to Asahi Kasei’s internal research it will be the world’s first company to use butadiene derived from plastics waste and the first Japanese company to employ butadiene derived from biomass for S-SBR production. The company says S-SBR is recognised as an optimum material for eco-friendly tires and enables a significant reduction in carbon emissions over the life cycle of tires. The companies held a signing ceremony for the supply agreement at a “Creating the Plastic Circular Economy in Singapore: Journey from Vision to Reality” event on Bukom Island in November.

Shell announced in late November that it will build a new pyrolysis oil “upgrader” at the Bukom site in Singapore to improve the quality of pyrolysis oil made from hard-to-recycle plastics waste and turn it into chemical feedstock for its plant. The 50,000 t/y facility is slated to begin production in 2023, and the company said it signed its first circular chemicals agreement in Asia with Asahi Kasei.

The company is said to process the equivalent to the weight of about 7.8 bn plastic bags. Shell noted it will use the treated pyrolysis oil to produce circular chemicals that are used in tyres or mattresses among other.