A few years ago, Antwerp’s top entrepreneur Fernand Huts announced that he would invest in research into and the construction of special factories that can convert plastic into the original raw materials. So complete recycling. In an interview with ‘VTM Nieuws’, he claims today that the pilot plant of his subsidiary, the Antwerp waste processor Indaver, has now really succeeded in carrying out full recycling thanks to research.
“We have done 10 years of research together with universities and have succeeded in reducing the plastic to oil and naphtha. In other words, that is 100 percent recycling”, explains the top man of Katoen Natie at ‘VTM Nieuws’.
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Then the circle is 100 percent complete. And then we can start building factories all over Europe, all over the world
“The process works”
“The pilot plant that we built with the universities works, the process works,” says Huts. “Now we are building the factory. When that factory is finished – in the course of 2024 – we will have to fine-tune and correct it further, but we are convinced that this factory will be able to convert plastic waste into oil (styrene oil) and naphtha. Then the circle is 100 percent complete. And then we can start building factories all over Europe, all over the world.”
1 billion euros has already been reserved for the project, according to Huts it costs 100 million to set up one factory. “We’ve invested several millions in research over the past 10 years,” he says.
The Big Difficulty
According to Huts, the great difficulty, the ‘art’ in the process, is to get out other chemical products in the plastic, so that you only have the pure plastic left to convert into oil and naphtha. He uses the example of a jar of yogurt that has different colors and where you have to eliminate the dyes in order to continue working with just the plastic.
That is the major problem with being able to recycle plastic, says the entrepreneur; any other chemical products contained therein. It is also for this reason that a lot of plastic still ends up in landfill or goes to incinerators.
“Incredible step forward”
“If the factory we are building now succeeds in doing this, it will be an unimaginable step forward for the environment,” concludes Huts.
“Then the large amounts of plastic that are now incinerated, or floating in the oceans or dumped somewhere on the ground… can then be returned to the circuit. Today, crude oil is turned into plastic. The difference is that we make new plastic from plastic waste, completely recycled and not from oil that we pump up from the earth.”
Also see: Antwerp entrepreneur Fernand Huts argues for the introduction of an energy cheque
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