BASF SE, Porsche AG, and technology partner BEST – Bioenergy and Sustainable Technologies GmbH are celebrating the successful completion of their pilot project on recycling mixed waste from end-of-life vehicles. The pilot demonstrates the recyclability of high-performance plastics from automotive shredder residues (ASR) with renewable raw materials. This mixture of plastic, film, paint, and foam residues is complex and can currently only be thermally recycled. The pilot shows that these automotive wastes can be recycled through gasification and then returned to the automotive cycle.
BASF
BASF, Porsche, and BEST successfully complete pilot project on chemical recycling
This pilot validates the viability of new sources of plastics and applications for chemical recycling in components. The primary goal is to source less primary material in the future and to increase the proportion of recycled materials in vehicles.
“Pilot projects like these allow us to evaluate how we can further develop the circular economy as a sustainability field at Porsche and how we can anchor chemical recycling in our strategy in the long term,” said Dr Robert Kallenberg, Head of Sustainability at Porsche AG. “We are testing new recycling technologies with our direct partners to increase recyclate quotas, gain access to previously unusable recyclate sources and evaluate new processes for waste streams that are currently being thermally utilised.”
Porsche hopes to use recycled materials in its vehicles and close resource cycles, with the company having set itself the goal of increasing the proportion of verifiable secondary materials in its vehicle production. This pilot can evaluate the potential of automotive shredder residues as a future recycling source and as a secondary raw material. This could make it a complementary alternative to mechanical recycling, which struggles to achieve high quality.
First fully non-fossil gasification to produce new plastics
The project saw a combined waste stream of purely automotive waste and biomass being recycled in a gasification process for the first time. The resulting recycled raw material can replace the fossil raw materials in BASF's integrated value chain. Within its production network, BASF then produces the polyurethane formulation needed for the steering wheel using a mass balance approach.
“In our plant, we have previously converted biomass such as wood or straw into chemical raw materials. In this pilot project together with BASF and Porsche, we have now used this gasification technology for the first time to convert complex plastic waste streams together with biomass into synthetic crude oil, known as syncrude,” said Dr Matthias Kuba, Area Manager Syngas Platform Technologies at BEST - Bioenergy and Sustainable Technologies GmbH in Vienna. “This form of chemical recycling has great potential for converting complex, mixed waste streams into new, valuable raw materials. It thus represents a sensible alternative to waste incineration.”
“At BASF, we coordinate our sustainability efforts on our plastics journey, which consists of three key steps in the product lifecycle: make, use and recycle. For the latter, we offer a wide range of recycling solutions because we are convinced that many methods need to complement each other to achieve recycling goals. We prioritise mechanical recycling and continuously improve its efficiency. At the same time, the type of waste and the degree of sorting determine which technology is best suited. We are convinced that complementary technologies such as chemical recycling, which includes pyrolysis, depolymerisation and gasification, are necessary to further promote the circular economy and reduce the plastic waste that still ends up in landfills or is incinerated today,” concludes Dr Martin Jung, President of BASF’s Performance Materials division. “To optimally utilise the various waste recovery options and further develop all technologies in parallel, the appropriate regulatory framework is essential.”