MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell plans to build a pyrolysis oil upgrader to turn plastic waste into chemical feedstock at its petrochemical complex in Singapore, part of its shift from oil and gas to renewables and low-carbon energy, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The company is also considering building a CCS regional hub and a 550,000 tpy biofuels plant at its 60-year-old Pulau Bukom manufacturing site, one of five remaining energy and chemical parks owned by Shell globally. The projects form part of Shell Singapore's plans to cut emissions from its own operations by half by 2030, from 2016 levels on a net basis, Shell Downstream Director Huibert Vigeveno said.
"This year, we have already halved our crude processing capacity, which is in line with Shell's global targets to reduce emissions," he said at a ceremony to break ground for the pyrolysis oil upgrader project. Energy companies are facing increasing pressure from investors, activists and governments to shift away from fossil fuels and rapidly ramp up investment in renewables.
Shell has pledged to halve emissions from its global operations by 2030, as well as reduce its net carbon footprint by 45% by 2035. The Singapore pyrolysis oil upgrader will produce 50,000 tpy of treated pyrolysis oil in 2023, the company said. The unit is Shell's first globally. It did not give an investment figure for the Singapore project.
Pyrolysis melts plastic waste into products such as pyrolysis oil, which can be upgraded as raw material for plastics and chemicals, although the process isn't commercially proven and consumes a lot of energy. Shell also plans to build two chemical conversion units in Asia to convert waste plastics into pyrolysis oil for the Shell Energy and Chemical Park Singapore at Bukom and Jurong Island, similar to units in the Netherlands with joint venture partner BlueAlp which will be operational in 2023.
Other projects being planned in Singapore include a CCS hub to reduce emissions. To meet Shell's global ambition to make around 2 MM tons of sustainable aviation fuel a year by 2025, the company is looking at investing in a facility to produce 550,000 tons of biofuels a year from waste and vegetable oils, Vigeveno said. Shell has previously announced it will trial the use of hydrogen fuel cells for ships in Singapore and is exploring developing a solar farm in a landfill near Bukom.
As per MRC, Royal Dutch Shell, the world's petrochemical major, has restarted its cracker in Pulau Bukom, Singapore after resolving technical issue. Thus, this cracker with an annual output of 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene came back on-line on 5 November, 2021. It was shut on 1 November, after a flare occurred at the plant. The company was earlier rumored to have reduced the ethylene and propylene allocations to its downstream buyers at the adjacent locations following the incident, however, with the prompt restart, the impact might be smaller than initially expected.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,868,160 tonnes in the first nine months of 2021, up by 18% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,138,510 tonnes in January-September 2021, up by 30% year on year. Supply of propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) decreased significantly.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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