Mitsubishi Chemical Opens Japan’s Largest Chemical Recycling Plant
Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. has completed construction of Japan’s largest chemical recycling facility.
The Ibaraki plant has been under construction since July 2021 at the Kashima Complex, a joint venture between Mitsubishi Chemical and Eneos, a Japanese petroleum company.
The facility was originally expected to start operations in 2023. It has a nameplate capacity of 20,000 metric tons of plastic waste per year.
The plant uses Mura Technology’s hydrothermal plastic recycling technology (Hydro-PRT), licensed by KBR.
Hydro-PRT is based on the use of supercritical water that enables mixed plastic waste to be recycled into feedstock for new plastics and other products.
Mitshubishi Chemical and Eneos said the oil produced at Ibaraki will be used as feedstock at their existing refinery and naphtha cracker. It will then be reprocessed into petroleum products and various chemicals and plastics.
The partners plan to obtain ISCC Plus certification for the new plant.
Last year, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry shared plans to introduce mandatory plastic recycled content targets for selected industries. This March, the Ministry said it wants to set a 15 percent recycled plastic target for new cars.
Japan generated around 8.23 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2022. The country mostly uses its waste for energy recovery. In 2021, 63 percent of plastic waste was incinerated for energy recovery, 25 percent was recycled, and the remaining 13 perent was landfilled or incinerated without energy recovery.