Neste concludes tire recycling trial run

Finnish petrochemical company Neste Oyj has successfully conducted its first processing trial run with liquefied discarded tires. In the processing run, the company says it produced high-quality raw material for new plastics and chemicals.

For the processing run, Neste sourced pyrolysis oil derived from discarded vehicle tires by Scandinavian Enviro Systems, a Swedish company developing technologies to recover materials from end-of-life products. The goal of Neste’s pilot run was to evaluate the potential of chemical recycling beyond plastic scrap to potentially broaden the pool of material streams that could be processed into high-quality products.

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Much like hard-to-recycle plastic, Neste says a large number of tires currently end up in landfills or are incinerated at the end of their life cycle. The composition of tires as a mix of several materials makes them difficult to recycle with mechanical recycling methods, and Neste says there is a strong case for using chemical recycling to help keep valuable materials in circulation, adding that Scandinavian Enviro Systems has developed a pyrolysis technology for extracting carbon black and oil from end-of-life tires.

“The beauty of chemical recycling is that it can process hard-to-recycle plastic waste. But it’s not limited to that,” says Andreas Teir, who oversees Neste’s raw materials supply for chemical recycling. “With discarded tires currently often facing a fate similar to plastic waste, we consider chemical recycling a valid addition when it comes to changing the linear life cycle of tires into a circular one. Thanks to our supplier Enviro Systems, we were able to prove that without recent processing run.”

In the past, Neste says it already has successfully concluded several processing runs with liquefied plastic. These runs built the basis for Neste’s decision to invest into large-scale capacities for chemical recycling at the company’s site in Porvoo, Finland. The facilities being built are expected to be finished in 2025 and will be able to process 150,000 tons of liquefied plastic scrap per year. They are part of the PULSE (Participatory Urban Living for Sustainable Environments) project, which is funded by the European Union through the EU Innovation Fund.