TotalEnergies has entered a strategic partnership with France-based Plastic Omnium to design and develop plastic materials from recycled polypropylene (rPP) for automotive parts.
The plastic materials will have a recycled component of 20-100pc, sourced from industrial and domestic waste streams. Using these "will have a CO2 impact as much as six times lower" than virgin plastics, TotalEnergies said, although the firm has not specified whether the recycled component in the materials will be entirely comprised of mechanically recycled PP or if it will also include streams of chemically recycled PP.
The development is the latest move by TotalEnergies towards its ambition of producing 30pc recycled and renewable polymers — involving both mechanical and chemical recycling — by 2030.
In October, the company more than doubled the mechanically recycled PP production capacity at its Normandy-based affiliate Synova to 45,000t/yr. Synova supplies rPP to the automotive and construction industries.
TotalEnergies has also made investments to market and promote polylactic acid (PLA), a bioplastic entirely produced from sugar instead of oil products. The firm operates a 75,000 t/yr PLA plant in Thailand in a 50:50 joint venture with Netherlands-based Corbion. And in September last year, it said it plans to construct a 100,000 t/yr PLA plant at Grandpuits in France and build France's first chemical recycling plant at the same site. This will involve transforming plastic waste into pyrolysis oil for use as feedstock for steam crackers to produce polymers.
TotalEnergies ceased conventional oil refining at Grandpuits around a year ago. It plans to start a 400,000 t/yr bio-refinery on the site by 2024, which will have a nameplate capacity of 50,000 t/yr of bio-naphtha for producing bio-polymers.
