French oil and petrochemicals group Total (Courbevoie / France; www.total.com) has inaugurated a EUR 45m demonstration plant to produce olefins and polyolefins from methanol at its Feluy / Belgium petrochemicals complex, opening up a further potential source of plastics feedstocks. The facility has been designed to assess, on a quasi-industrial scale, the feasibility of two integrated processes using methanol, which can be obtained from natural gas, coal or biomass, as a feedstock. In the first stage the UOP/Hydro methanol to olefins (MTO) process converts the methanol into ethylene, propylene and heavier olefins. The heavy olefins, in turn, are converted into propylene using the UOP/Total Petrochemicals olefin cracking process (OCP). All of these olefins are then converted into polyolefins at the existing pilot polymerisation unit on the site.