US chemical group Dow (Midland, Michigan; www.dow.com) and UK process technology provider Mura Technology (London; www.muratechnology.com) said they will build Europe’s biggest facility for chemical recycling in Böhlen, Germany. The new plant – the first of its kind in the country – is to have a capacity of 120,000 t/y and begin operations by 2025, Dow said.

The plant is to use Mura’s hydrothermal plastics recycling solution (HydroPRS) technology. This process employs supercritical steam to convert plastics waste – including flexible and multi-layer applications considered non-recyclable – back into the original oils and chemicals from which they were made. This is said to allow for the same material to be recycled repeatedly. Dow said it intends to use the recovered feedstock in its own production of polyethylene by feeding it into a cracker.

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The Böhlen facility is part of the companies’ plan to build five large-scale chemical recycling plants in Europe and the US by 2030, each with a capacity of 120,000 t/y (see Plasteurope.com of 27.07.2022). A plant with an initial capacity of 20,000 t/y is currently being erected in Teesside, UK, with commissioning scheduled for 2023.

The Dow group operates 104 production sites in 31 countries worldwide, employing around 35,700.