Towards high-quality petrochemical feedstocks from mixed plastic packaging waste via advanced recycling: The past, present and future

Advanced plastic waste recycling via pyrolysis and subsequent steam cracking of pyrolysis oils has the potential to partly close the cycle between the petrochemical production of plastics and current end-of-life waste man-agement (i.e., downcycling, incineration, landfilling). However, the greatest obstacle is the complex composition of real plastic waste and their contamination with numerous additives and residues. Consequently, the lower quality of pyrolysis products compared to fossil feedstocks needs to be drastically improved by universally applicable upgrading and decontamination techniques. Techniques range from waste pre-treatment to reduce the halogen and additive contents, via in-situ techniques applied during pyrolysis to post-treatment techniques to purify the obtained pyrolysis oils using hydrotreatment, filtration or adsorption. Incorporated into a petro-chemical cluster, high-quality petrochemical feedstocks can be produced from plastic waste, which, combined with electrification, could lead to a CO2 emission reduction of >90% compared to incineration as the current mostly used disposal method.