Clean energy technology firm Topsoe will supply its HydroFlex technology to energy solutions company Abundia Global Impact Group for use in US plastic waste-to-fuel projects.
The technology will be deployed across three planned facilities, each expected to produce around 1,500 barrels per day of renewable fuels and chemicals from municipal and post-industrial plastic waste.
The HydroFlex process uses hydrogen to remove impurities and upgrade feedstocks into drop-in fuels, alongside standard refinery gases used in hydrotreating operations.
“These exciting projects represent an important step in demonstrating new use cases for plastic waste,” said Henrik Rasmussen, Managing Director of Topsoe Americas.
Abundia’s plastic facilities will use municipal plastic waste and post-industrial plastics as feedstock to produce chemical feedstock, diesel and aviation fuel, which Topsoe states are fully compatible with modern combustion engines.
“As we integrate this solution into our technology stack, we have confidence that the value of this partnership will not only be realised in our 2026 commercialisation plan, but as a long-term strategic component in Abundia’s multi-project plan,” said Ed Gillespie, CEO of Abundia.
The world produces about 353 million metric tonnes of plastic waste each year, according to the OECD’s Global Plastics Outlook. Only around 9% of this waste is recycled and the remainder is largely treated as waste.
The process used by Topsoe to convert feedstocks to fuel ©Topsoe
Plastic waste-to-fuel projects use technologies like pyrolysis – heating plastics in the absence of oxygen – to break down waste into fuels.
However, it is not without its challenges. The conversion process often has high capital costs, energy-intensive processes, and there is a need for high-quality, pre-separated plastic waste.
Despite this, projects seem to be on the rise and the market is expected to grow from 21.4% CAGR to 23.7% between 2026 and 2033, according to Grand View Research.
Other key projects include UK-based Quantafuel and Viridor converting non-recyclable plastic into chemical feedstocks, and researchers developing solar-powered systems to produce hydrogen from plastic waste.
In the UK, much of the interest in plastic-to-fuel tech is driven by the Government’s Energy Bill enabling support of recycled carbon fuels.
The ReNew ELP and Neste UK/Australia project is using catalytic hydrothermal reactor technology to turn mixed plastic waste into feedstock and fuel.
In Southeast Asia, Clean Planet Energy and Riverrecycle have partnered on ‘ecoPlants’ that convert plastic waste collected from rivers into fuel for ships and planes.
Fuel giant Repsol is working on a project called Plastics2Olefins in Spain to develop a plant that will convert 100% renewable electricity into fuel from unsorted waste.
