Aduro and Brightlands Enter into Discussions to Partner and Develop Hydrochemolytic Technology for Chemical Recycling of Plastic
Aduro Clean Technologies Inc. A Canadian developer of patented water-based technologies to chemically recycle plastics and transform heavy crude and renewable oils into new-era resources and higher-value fuels, announces a pending partnership with Brightlands Chemelot Campus (“Brightlands”) an international shared innovation community located in Limburg, the Netherlands.
The objective of this partnership is to complete an installation that applies Aduro Hydrochemolytic™ technology (HCT) to demonstrate, on a tons per day scale, the conversion of polyethylene (PE) waste to useful feedstock for chemical processes. Interest in this project by Brightlands is a result of its comprehensive and detailed review of HCT. The review concluded that HCT offers distinct advantages over traditional pyrolysis for bringing PE into the circular economy through chemical recycling to obtain valuable, high-purity products, such as value-added chemicals or feedstock for production of new, virgin PE.
“After reviewing the Aduro technology and interviewing its experts over the past 12 months, we feel the HCT-based solution provides certain benefits compared to alternatives. Therefore, we are very excited about the possibility for advancing this important technology to a commercial scale and establishing it as a valuable solution to the waste plastic problem,” says Eric Appelman, Director of Business Development at the Brightlands Chemelot Campus for Industrial Upscaling.
“Aduro HCT is a valuable addition to the innovative technologies that are being scaled up at Brightlands as part of the Chemelot Circular Hub. It offers benefits due to the low temperature process, high yield, lack of aromatics formation, and ability to use inexpensive feedstocks and catalysts,” adds Lucie Wenmakers, Business Development Manager at Brightlands.
Aduro will provide the technical expertise required to build the pilot plant. Brightlands will host the pilot plant within its Sustainable Processes and Materials ecosystem by providing the physical location, utilities, and services, and it will also provide support to anchor the technology in Europe by facilitating relationships with supply chain, knowledge, and funding partners.
The project represents a natural progression for Aduro following its imminent attainment of the First Milestone. “Achieving the First Milestone requires us to simply show that the Hydrochemolytic™ chemistry, proven for years in small laboratory batch reactors, will also work in the continuous-flow mode needed for commercial systems. Our experience tells us that the operation of HCT in continuous processing should work even better than in batch, giving us great confidence as we progress toward commercialization,” explains Ofer Vicus, CEO of Aduro.
Both Appelman and Vicus agree that, due to the chemical diversity of plastics, a comprehensive strategy for resource recovery from waste plastics will rely on a combination of technologies configured to optimize value in consideration of local and regional factors. Thus, Aduro anticipates the project will progressively expand the application of HCT to also upcycle polypropylene, polystyrene, and other diverse types of plastic, then leverage other technologies as needed to further maximize resource recovery for the circular economy.
