Indonesia's Pan Era Group Commissions 2,000 t/y Plastic Pyrolysis Oil Demonstration Unit

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On November 12, Indonesian plastics recycling company Pan Era Group commissioned a commercial chemical recycling demonstration unit in Serang, Banten Province, with a designed annual capacity of 2,000 tonnes of plastic pyrolysis oil. The facility uses pyrolysis technology to convert waste plastics into plastic pyrolysis oil (PPO). After quality testing and meeting the technical requirements of the petrochemical industry, the product can be used as petrochemical feedstock. The commissioning represents a new business expansion by the group from conventional mechanical recycling into chemical recycling.

The core process of the demonstration unit is plastic pyrolysis. After pretreatment, waste plastics are heated and decomposed under oxygen-deficient or oxygen-free conditions, converting high-molecular-weight polymers into liquid oil and other by-products. Unlike mechanical recycling, which produces plastic pellets through washing, shredding and extrusion, pyrolysis can process some mixed plastic waste that is difficult to recycle through conventional mechanical means. The pyrolysis oil produced by this project is primarily aimed at the petrochemical feedstock market, and whether it can enter downstream production units depends on oil composition, impurity content and customer technical specifications.

At the current stage, the project first undertakes three verification tasks: first, assessing the quantity and stability of local waste plastic feedstock supply in Indonesia; second, testing the quality of pyrolysis oil to confirm whether it meets the feedstock specifications of petrochemical enterprises; third, calculating the costs of equipment operation, feedstock collection, pretreatment and product sales to evaluate the commercial economics of the process. The 2,000 t/y figure is the designed pyrolysis oil capacity of the demonstration unit, not the annual waste plastic processing volume; the actual feedstock input also depends on process yield and operating load.

With the construction of this chemical recycling demonstration unit, the group has integrated mechanical recycling and pyrolysis technology into a single business system: plastics suitable for mechanical recycling continue to be processed into recycled resins, while some plastic waste that is difficult to effectively recycle mechanically enters the pyrolysis process and is converted into petrochemical feedstock. The two processes correspond to different feedstock and product routes, and pyrolysis is not intended to completely replace mechanical recycling.