New French recycling technology to recycle 50 MM PET food trays per year

Thai-based Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL) with its facility Wellman France Recycling in Verdun, has been working on the PET trays recycling for 6 years and through an ongoing project with VALORPLAST and supported by CITEO, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The project has the objective to develop and validate recycling for monolayer and multilayer PET trays. VALORPLAST has collected significant quantities of post-consumer PET trays and several industrial runs have been conducted by Wellman. The produced flakes are being tested by several actors to develop high quality applications. Those tests have led by IVL to develop a commercially feasible recycling solution for monolayer PET trays with the collaboration of Klockner Pentaplast. The new technology is processing monolayer PET trays used for food packaging (meat, produce and cheese) into a high-quality product, suitable for new tray production.

This new recycling innovation will see over 50 million post-consumer PET trays diverted away from landfill or incineration. " PET trays are essential to combat food waste. Their high barrier properties protect food for longer meaning fresh and safe food for all of us.” for Francois LAGRUE, Head of Operations – Europe, Indorama Ventures Recycling Group said “This new technology will mean that for the first time we have a circular recycling solution for PET tray packaging. This will lend significant support in realising the EU’s plastic collection and recycling targets.

"This is a true value circle effort. Tests were performed at all levels, including sorting, recycling and conversion. Ensuring the input met the right quality and purity levels is our top priority. Development of tray recycling has been a goal for some time. We are proud that – together with our partners – we have been able to develop a commercially and technically feasible process, that allows us to produce a dedicated rPET flake product for the food packaging market."

Testing has now moved into commercial production. 500 tonnes of PET trays are now being processed monthly and transformed into a high-quality tray flake, which can be used to produce new trays. The purity of the flakes is comparable with high-quality bottle flake. A further scale up is foreseen, and the company plans to process 10KT of tray flake in 2022.

Catherine Klein, General Director of VALORPLAST said, “We are delighted with the results of this ambitious project. It shows that the recycling of plastic packaging is really progressing. On the side of VALORPLAST, we have been involved for many years on PET trays recycling. This main project, hand in hand with Indorama Ventures’ Wellman site and started in 2018, leads today to an opportunity for industrial recycling for this type of packaging. Through the project, we are also working on solutions for multilayer PET trays. The next steps could be the game changer we look for."

Adam Barnett, President of the Food Packaging Division at Klockner Pentaplast said, “We welcome this investment in Europe’s circular economy. By delivering a circular system for trays weensure that valuable secondary raw material is not wasted. We will be using this flake as part of our kp Tray2Tray initiative to include recycled content in our food packaging trays for the fresh food sector across Europe. An exciting step change to creating and supporting true circularity.

As per ICIS-MRC Price Report, April PET chips supply to the country increased to 15,000 tonnes, compared to 13,500 tonnes a month earlier. Imports of material were at 31,500 tonnes in April 2021.The share of Chinese material was 99% (14,900 tonnes) in April versus 89% (12,000 tonnes) a month earlier. Supply of bottle grade PET increased by 10% in the four months 2021 compared to the same period last year - from 67,100 tonnes to 73,700 tonnes.

mrchub.com

Algeria's national oil company Sonatrach said on Thursday it has awarded China a USD520-MM contract to build a Methyl Tert Butyl Ether plant, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The project will enter into production in 2025 with an output estimated at 200,000 tpy, the company added during the signing ceremony.

As per MRC, the Chief Executive Officer of Sonatrach, Toufik Hakkar, and the Chief Executive Officer of Eni, Claudio Descalzi, in the presence of the Minister of Energy and Mines Mohamed Arkab and the Ambassador of Italy to Algiers Giovanni Pugliese, have signed a new oil contract related to the onshore Berkine basin area, where Eni has been a leader since 1981. On the same occasion, Eni and Sonatrach also signed a MOU for cooperation on initiatives in the energy transition.

We remind, in September 2020, energy company Sonatrach announced it had controlled two oil leaks that occurred earlier in the OK1 pipeline due to bad weather. Sonatrach had said earlier in a statement on Facebook that the pipeline connects Hassi Messaoud to Skikda.
mrchub.com

The White House is considering waiving U.S. gasoline environmental rules aimed at reducing summertime smog, hoping the waiver will combat rising pump prices, according to three sources involved in the discussions, said Reuters.

The Biden administration is considering waiving U.S. gasoline environmental rules aimed at reducing summertime smog, hoping the waiver will combat rising pump prices, according to three sources involved in the discussions.

Refiners and blenders are required to avoid lower-cost components like butane in summer gasoline, but the White House is weighing suspending that rule to help lower fuel costs. The components help elevate gasoline's Reid vapor pressure, or RVP, which contributes to smog at higher levels, particularly in the hot summer months.

President Joe Biden's administration has already lifted the requirement for summer sales of E15, a lower-price, high ethanol gasoline. The waiver under consideration would apply to all grades of gasoline, the sources said. No final decision has been made, they said.

The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment. Outside groups, particularly governors, have been lobbying the White House to issue the waiver. Biden has made fighting inflation and high pump prices the top priority ahead of congressional elections in November. Republicans seeking to take control of Congress have bludgeoned Democrats with the issue and the White House has adopted an 'everything is on the table' approach to curb the price spike.

U.S. gasoline futures dropped in post-settlement trade by more than 4% to as low as USD3.6314 a gallon, then eased further after Reuters reported the move was under consideration. The price of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped 50% in the last year, to more than USD4.59 on average nationally, according to the American Automobile Association.

As per MRC, The U.S. House passed a bill on Thursday that allows the U.S. president to issue an energy emergency declaration, making it unlawful for companies to excessively increase gasoline and home fuel prices. The bill must pass the Senate, where it faces an uncertain future, and be signed by President Joe Biden to become law.

As per MRC, the price of Brent crude oil, the world benchmark, has increased in 2022, partly as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In addition, a strong U.S. dollar means that countries that use currencies other than the U.S. dollar pay more as crude oil prices increase.
mrchub.com

Honeywell announced an Emissions Control & Reduction Initiative designed to help customers achieve carbon neutrality in a wide range of areas, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The initiative will initially focus on helping oil and gas customers with upstream, midstream and downstream operations to monitor and reduce fugitive methane emissions, which are more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

By combining its portfolio of fixed, portable and personal gas detection solutions with gas cloud imaging cameras, Honeywell will provide customers with early detection of fugitive methane emissions, including the precise location of any leaks and associated data analytics and trends. Equipped with this data, users can act quickly to address leaks and other identified risks to minimize production losses and maintain compliance with legislation.

The solution – which combines wireless gas detector technology with enterprise-wide data management solutions – works in tandem with existing Leak Detection & Repair (LDAR) testing methods to improve the accuracy of reporting and increase productivity by enabling users to find production losses faster. “The Emissions Control and Reduction Initiative expands on Honeywell’s wide range of ready-now technologies that are helping our customers meet their sustainability goals,” said Ujjwal Kumar, president of Honeywell Process Solutions. “With our pedigree in gas detection and breadth of solutions, Honeywell is providing customers with a holistic and proactive approach to emission reduction that they’ve never had before."

Honeywell recently announced a new set of commitments that further advance its sustainability goals beyond the company’s existing commitment to become carbon neutral in its facilities and operations by 2035. The new pledges include a commitment to develop a science-based target with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) that includes scope 3 emissions and participation in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Climate Challenge. These initiatives represent a continuation of the company's sustainability efforts since 2004, which have already driven a more than 90% reduction in the greenhouse gas intensity of its operations and facilities. The company also supports the Paris Climate Agreement.

As MRC reported earlier, in January 2022, Honeywell announced that it had been selected by Repsol to supply an integrated control and safety system (ICSS) for the first advanced biofuels production plant to be built in Spain. The new facility will employ a variety of distributed control systems, emergency shutdown (ESD), fire and gas (F&G) and human-machine interface (HMI) solutions from Honeywell to achieve efficient, sustainable and low-emission operations. Last year, Repsol announced its strategy to become a net-zero emissions company by 2050 and recently announced more ambitious targets that will accelerate its transformation.
mrchub.com

Spain-based energy company Repsol will invest EUR80 million to build two new low-emission refineries in Spain as part of its goal to reduce its carbon emissions, said the company.

Repsol said the first project involves building one of the world’s largest refineries to manufacture net zero emissions fuels, using CO2 and green hydrogen generated with renewable energy.

It said the second project would involve the generation of gas from urban waste, which will replace part of the traditional fuels used in the production process.

'Both initiatives - innovative, sustainable, and generating high added-value - anticipate the refinery of the future and represent an important impetus to technological and industrial development that is essential in the current context of economic recovery,' Repsol said.

The company's CEO Josu Jon Imaz San Miguel said that Spain must base its decarbonization strategy on its technological and industrial capabilities.

'The production of green hydrogen and its combination with the capture and use of CO2 to produce net zero emissions fuels is part of Repsol’s industrial decarbonization strategy. With this project, Spanish industry positions itself to be a relevant European player in reducing emissions,' he said.

Repsol lifted the force majeure for the supply of butadiene in Tarragona (Tarragona, Spain), announced earlier in February. On February 10, the company stopped two lines for the production of butadiene with a total capacity of 130 tons per year in Tarragona. According to a company source, butadiene production was resumed on 23 March.

Earlier it was reported that against the backdrop of a change in global strategy, the Spanish Repsol, formerly a major investor in the Russian fuel and energy complex, announced its withdrawal from Russia in December last year. The company will sell its shares in the oil assets of Evrotek-Yugra and ASB Geo to a Russian partner, Gazprom Neft.

Repsol is the largest oil and gas company in Spain and Latin America, one of the ten largest oil and gas corporations in the world.
mrchub.com