It also promoted \u201cadvanced recycling,\u201d also called chemical recycling, as a technological solution to the waste crisis. The term covers processes like depolymerization, which can create polymers of a quality unattainable with the sorting, shredding, and water-based washing involved in conventional, mechanical recycling.<\/p>\n
The chemical recycling process deployed most widely has been pyrolysis, and dozens of plants\u00a0were built or have been planned around the world. The role envisioned for pyrolysis was ambitious: take in millions of metric tons of mixed plastic waste that is too messy for mechanical recycling and\u00a0transform this plastic into a feedstock for petrochemical plants to convert into brand-new resins.<\/p>\n
More than half a decade later, pyrolysis hasn\u2019t lived up to that promise. Production rates at pyrolysis plants are low\u2014around 5% in some cases\u2014and a small fraction of what would be acceptable for a petrochemical complex. Pyrolysis plants have shut down, projects have been canceled, and firms have gone bankrupt.<\/p>\n
“Maybe a lot of disappointment in the industry has been created by companies that were promising actually more than they were ready to do at that time.”<\/p>\n
Valerio Coppini , chief commercial officer, Alterra<\/p>\n
Share \u201cIf you are going to plastic-to-plastic recycling, or plastic recovery, then pretty much pyrolysis is heading towards a bit of a dead end,\u201d says Marcian Lee, an analyst with the consulting firm Lux Research.<\/p>\n But a few firms are persisting with the technology, and they maintain ambitious expansion plans. By painstakingly fine-tuning their plants, they say they have learned to improve practices enough to make pyrolysis viable. Executives at these firms say they haven\u2019t given up on the dream that pyrolysis could one day help society safely and effectively manage its plastic waste.<\/p>\n Pyrolysis: A challenging process<\/p>\n In pyrolysis, heat in the absence of oxygen breaks down long polymer chains into pyrolysis oil, a crude oil\u2013like substance that is sold to refiners and petrochemical makers.\u00a0The output of pyrolysis oil from pyrolysis units varies depending on the input and reaction conditions, but firms operating the plants often claim yields of around 70%. The rest is by-product gases\u2014usually captured to heat the pyrolysis reactor\u2014and char, which can be landfilled or used as a fuel or as a filler for concrete.<\/p>\n
The feedstock for pyrolysis plants is mostly waste polyethylene and polypropylene products, such as film, that are hard to recycle in a conventional mechanical process. Sorting weeds out plastics like polyethylene terephthalate and polyvinyl chloride, which create undesirable benzoic acid and hydrochloric acid by-products, respectively. The plastics are dried and shredded before they are loaded into the pyrolysis reactor.<\/p>\n
The reaction conditions vary by design, but generally pyrolysis plants heat the waste plastics to between 350 \u00b0C and 700 \u00b0C in the absence of oxygen. The heat breaks carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds, thus creating many different aliphatic and aromatic molecules. Roughly 70% of the output is pyrolysis liquid and waxes. The balance is gases, which are used as fuel in the pyrolysis reactor, and char, which is landfilled or burned as fuel.<\/p>\n
To make the output suitable as a feedstock for petrochemical facilities, adsorbents and hydroprocessing are applied to remove chlorine, nitrogen, and other pollutants. A hydrocracker or similar unit further breaks down large molecules.<\/p>\n
After it has been upgraded, the pyrolysis oil is blended with conventional naphtha and fed into an ethylene cracker to create basic petrochemicals such as ethylene and propylene. These are subsequently polymerized into new polyethylene and polypropylene, as well as other products.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Recent years have seen an increase in the number of pyrolysis projects around the world. According to Lux Research, enough pyrolysis plant capacity was operating globally at the end of 2025 to process about 850,000 metric tons (t) of plastic waste per year, more than double the amount in 2023.<\/p>\n Lux\u2019s Lee points to an important qualifier, however. \u201cThis is installed capacity,\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t really mean that they\u2019re operating at their full scale. And honestly, we don\u2019t really know what the actual utilization rate is, but we expect it to be typically quite low.\u201d<\/p>\n But some production numbers are publicly available. Lee points to ExxonMobil as probably the only firm that has made real progress ramping up pyrolysis oil production. The company’s Texas plant started up in 2022 and ran at around 50% of capacity over its first 2 years. On the other end of the spectrum is Pryme, which in May announced<\/a> its intentions to shut down its plant, in the Netherlands. In 2025, the company processed only 1,023 t of product, despite annual capacity of 26,000 t.<\/p>\n Lee says Pryme is a \u201ctextbook example\u201d of the difficulties facing pyrolysis plants. \u201cWe know that Pryme struggled with feedstock contamination,\u201d he says. \u201cThey struggled with producing pyrolysis oil that is not on spec for their offtakers.\u201d<\/p>\n This is a common difficulty. As it turns out, plastic pyrolysis plants aren\u2019t magic cauldrons that can transform any old plastic waste into a petrochemical feedstock.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much like in mechanical recycling, the plastics must be carefully sorted before they are shredded and fed into the reactor. Plastics that contain only carbon and hydrogen\u2014such as polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene\u2014work best in the process. Operators must remove polyvinyl chloride because it forms hydrochloric acid (HCl), which damages equipment, as well as polyethylene terephthalate because it forms benzoic acid, which clogs pipes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even with such sorting, the resulting pyrolysis oil can still contain too many impurities to use in a petrochemical plant, so it is hydrotreated to eliminate contaminants. The oil might also be run through a hydrocracker to further break down its molecular constituents and prepare it to be blended with the naphtha feedstock that many petrochemical plants use.<\/p>\n These fundamentals are critical to pyrolysis\u2014and are more important than the regulatory policies that pyrolysis players often blame for their shortcomings, Lee says. \u201cThe first hurdle you have to overcome is to actually operate at your full capacity. Even if regulations are in place . . . it means nothing if your plant is not really producing the oil at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n A wave of US pyrolysis plant shutdowns<\/p>\n Over the past year, the US has furnished several examples of firms unable to clear that production hurdle. Three relatively new pyrolysis plants\u2014operated by Brightmark, Freepoint Eco-Systems, and Braven Environmental\u2014have shut down, representing half of the large plants operating in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brightmark began construction of its facility in Ashley, Indiana, in 2019. The plant was designed with the capacity to process 100,000 t of plastic waste per year into industrial waxes and fuels such as diesel.<\/p>\n Construction didn\u2019t go smoothly. In 2020, Brightmark CEO Bob Powell told C&EN<\/a> that the $260 million plant was 80% complete and would begin operating in 2021. By April 2022, the company had produced only 2,000 t of product. Powell blamed<\/a> a fire and delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Brightmark aspired to expand beyond Ashley. In 2021, it unveiled plans for a $680 million facility in Georgia, but the project failed to obtain financing because Brightmark hadn\u2019t successfully demonstrated the Ashley plant.<\/p>\n The Brightmark affiliate operating the Ashley plant went bankrupt in 2025 after defaulting on $172 million in\u00a0green bonds issued by the Indiana Finance Authority. The plant was running at only 5% of capacity, Brightmark\u2019s restructuring officer wrote in the bankruptcy petition<\/a>. With such a low utilization rate, the petition says, the plant couldn\u2019t cover its $800,000 in weekly operating and capital costs. On top of those ongoing outlays, the facility needed $100 million in upgrades.<\/p>\n Brightmark managed to acquire the facility out of bankruptcy, but its second attempt at running it didn\u2019t last long. In a July 2026 response to a compliance update order<\/a> from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, plant manager Chris Hillary says, \u201cBrightmark has temporarily suspended active plastics-to-fuel processing operations at the Ashley facility while the company conducts a comprehensive evaluation of its technology configuration, operational strategy, staffing model, and future development plans for the site.\u201d<\/p>\n Tarrytown, New York\u2013based Braven has also faced its share of challenges.<\/p>\n The firm appeared to have strong industry backing for its plastics recycling project in Zebulon, North Carolina. In 2020, Braven started up a demonstration facility with annual capacity to process 12,000 t of plastic waste. The next year, Chevron Phillips Chemical agreed to <\/a>buy pyrolysis oil from the company.<\/p>\n Braven then announced plans for a larger plant in Texarkana, Texas, from which BASF agreed<\/a> to buy the output. But Braven started to encounter trouble at the North Carolina plant. In 2022, state inspectors found brown stains on the ground, which indicated contamination, and a smoldering dumpster filled with char. Officials also learned that the plant had shipped hundreds of drums of hazardous waste to another location without authorization. A 2024 visit from state inspectors found violations such as dozens of tanks filled with oil residue and exposed to stormwater.<\/p>\n In a May 2025 email obtained by Inside Climate News<\/a>, Braven vice president of engineering and construction Michael Bloss told state officials<\/a>, \u201cWe have idled the plant for the foreseeable future and are not pursuing any activity that is not an immediate Environmental, Health, Safety or Compliance item.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Braven walked away from a deal to buy a site for its planned facility in Texarkana. Asked about its deal with Braven, BASF spokesperson Birgit Hellmann responds in an email that \u201cBASF is pursuing alternative options for supplying our North American production sites with volumes of qualified pyrolysis oil.\u201d<\/p>\n Freepoint followed a similar trajectory. In 2022. the company began building a facility in Hebron, Ohio, with the capacity to process 90,000 t per year of plastics. It reported its first sale,<\/a> to Shell Chemicals, in April 2025.<\/p>\n In 2023, while the Ohio plant was under construction, Freepoint began planning a second unit\u2014twice the size of its first<\/a>\u2014in Eloy, Arizona. Dow agreed the next year to purchase 65,000 t of annual output from the second plant.<\/p>\n The Hebron plant then started running into trouble with regulators<\/a>. Last December, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency sent Freepoint a notice of violations that included visible particulate emissions likely due to a faulty oil absorber. It also determined that the plant wasn\u2019t using a scrubber to control HCl emissions. This April, the Ohio EPA warned Freepoint<\/a> that less than 70% of the unit\u2019s recent output was pyrolysis oil, which meant it would need to be regulated as a waste combustion facility and face tougher emissions standards.<\/p>\n In June, Freepoint issued a statement that it was winding down operations to a \u201ccare-and-maintenance state while strategic options for the facility are evaluated.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to an inquiry from C&EN, Dow spokesperson Helena Alonso writes in an e-mail that the company \u201cdoes not disclose details regarding specific commercial arrangements, supplier evaluations, feedstock sourcing strategies, delivery volumes or offtake agreements.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Dow also notes that it continues to look at advanced recycling generally as a means of broadening the variety of plastics that can be recycled. \u201cPyrolysis is one of multiple advanced recycling technologies that Dow is exploring. Dow remains committed to maintaining a diversified portfolio of advanced recycling partners, technologies and feedstock sources to support future customer demand for circular products,\u201d Alonso writes.<\/p>\n Marco J. Castaldi, chair of the chemical engineering department at the City College of New York, says the underlying process shouldn\u2019t be blamed for failures in the chemical recycling of plastics. \u201cIt\u2019s not the technology,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about the upstream and downstream supply chain and all about the economics.\u201d<\/p>\n Castaldi points to the difficulties before and after plastics are introduced to the pyrolysis reactor, such as managing feedstocks and purifying pyrolysis oil in secondary processes, especially for smaller companies. \u201cThe big commonality is what I would classify as companies trying to do too much,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The companies that are still standing are avoiding those pitfalls, Castaldi says. For example, they are paying waste management companies that are willing to clean up waste plastics to tight specifications so that the pyrolysis companies can produce an output of consistent quality. \u201cWhat I see as the big problem is on the front end: getting scale of waste contracts of the material they want at the price they can afford,\u201d Castaldi says.<\/p>\n Strategies of the companies still sticking to pyrolysis<\/p>\n Nexus Circular cofounder Jeff Gold examines a flask of pyrolysis oil.<\/p>\n Credit: The few firms that are still operating pyrolysis plants in the US\u2014ExxonMobil, Alterra, and Nexus Circular\u2014say they have been honing important skills, such as acquiring the right feedstocks. These companies continue to work on pyrolysis plant expansions. And all are backed by powerful investors\u2014or in the case of ExxonMobil, an expansive company itself\u2014with a strong interest in making the technology work.<\/p>\n ExxonMobil is the largest US oil and chemical company and claims to also be the country\u2019s largest chemical recycler. Since 2021, it has started up three pyrolysis units at its Baytown, Texas, refining and petrochemical complex; it now has a total of 110,000 t of annual plastics-processing capacity. The company plans to complete a fourth unit by year-end, which will bring its capacity to 200,000 t per year. ExxonMobil says it has processed about 70,000 t of waste since its first unit opened in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n Eloissa Wells, ExxonMobil\u2019s circular products director, says the company\u2019s integration is one difference between its approach and what others have attempted. ExxonMobil is able to turn its pyrolysis oil into fuel and chemicals in refining and chemical units right at the Baytown site, she says. \u201cWe\u2019re doing an in situ pyrolysis approach that allows us to leverage the scale of our complex manufacturing site.\u201d<\/p>\n Building several pyrolysis units in succession has also helped, Wells says. \u201cEvery time we start to engineer a new one, we take a look at some of the bottlenecks that we had with the previous one.\u201d<\/p>\n And ExxonMobil casts a wide net for its raw materials. \u201cWe look across North America to find feedstocks that have been collected that meet our specifications that traditionally cannot be mechanically recycled at scale,\u201d Wells says.<\/p>\n Plastics aren\u2019t going straight from a consumer\u2019s recycling bin into ExxonMobil\u2019s plant. In a LinkedIn thread<\/a>, Greg Janson, CEO of Triton Group, a recycling firm that supplies ExxonMobil, explains that firms like his buy bales of postconsumer plastic and put them through several upgrading steps before sending them to a pyrolysis plant. \u201cExxon is not buying bales of scrap. They are buying sorted, processed, regrind and repro,\u201d or reprocessed plastics, he writes.<\/p>\n Still, Janson notes that quality standards for waste plastics destined for a pyrolysis plant are lower than they are for those that will be mechanically recycled.\u00a0Companies that provide plastics for pyrolysis don\u2019t need to pinpoint properties such as density and melt flow, which they do for recycled resins that will be melted and remolded into new products.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, it needs to be a clean olefin,\u201d Janson says, referring to polyolefins such as polyethylene. A market for these materials devoid of property requirements doesn\u2019t exist at scale for mechanical recycling\u2014pyrolysis is the only option, he says.<\/p>\n Alterra, which has been running a pyrolysis plant in Akron, Ohio, since 2020, has a list of more than 100 qualified suppliers of plastic waste that it says can meet its specifications. \u201cWe make a quite intensive screening on the characteristics of the feedstock,\u201d says Valerio Coppini, Alterra\u2019s chief commercial officer. As part of this screening, the company runs the material through a pilot plant and analyzes the quality of the pyrolysis oil it yields.<\/p>\n \u201cWe never underestimate the complexity of what we are doing,\u201d Coppini says. \u201cMaybe a lot of disappointment in the industry has been created by companies that were promising actually more than they were ready to do at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n One task that Coppini thinks pyrolysis plants shouldn\u2019t take on is purification of pyrolysis oil. Building what he calls \u201ca toy hydrotreater,\u201d which would be smaller and less economical than hydrotreaters at large refineries, runs up expenses. A better approach is for refining and petrochemical customers to take care of that step or for the industry to establish centralized purification facilities. The oil companies Shell and Neste have done this in the Netherlands and in Finland, respectively.<\/p>\n Neste is one of Alterra\u2019s equity owners, as are the major petrochemical makers LyondellBasell Industries and Chevron Phillips Chemical. In addition, Alterra has been collaborating with Neste and the engineering firm Technip Energies to license its technology to firms seeking to enter plastic pyrolysis.<\/p>\n One licensing customer is the low-carbon-fuel maker Abundia Global Impact Group, which wants to build a plastics pyrolysis plant in Baytown with 80,000 t per year of capacity. Alterra is also in negotiations to license technology for plants in Australia and Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n But Alterra has stumbled as well. Last year, Neste and the plastics compounding firm Ravago Manufacturing scrapped plans<\/a> to build a plant in the Netherlands with Alterra\u2019s technology. In 2023, Alterra signed a deal to license its technology for a massive, 192,000 metric-ton-per-year plant that Freepoint had proposed<\/a> for the Gulf Coast, but Freepoint ultimately didn\u2019t execute a license agreement and build a plant.<\/p>\n And last year, Alterra dropped its own plan to build a pyrolysis plant in Sugarloaf, Pennsylvania, that would have been four times as large as the Akron facility. The company cited problems securing a lease, though the plant also faced local opposition. Coppini says Alterra is still pursuing a second US plant.<\/p>\n A problem of too much, too fast<\/p>\n To Clint Thompson, chief commercial officer of Nexus Circular, the main reason companies have failed in pyrolysis is that they scaled up too quickly. \u201cThey ran small pilot plants and then they tried to jump to what was the biggest plant in the world. And you just technically can\u2019t do that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Thompson says Nexus has been proceeding more carefully. It started up its plant in Atlanta in 2019,\u00a0which has gone through three iterations of its technology and now has 16,000 t per year of processing capacity. The company is now installing 12 production lines with the improved technology at a facility in McDonough, Georgia, that will add 192,000 t per year of overall capacity. The first two lines will start up by year-end; four more will open in 2027.<\/p>\n With the major new plant, Nexus\u2019s feedstock acquisitions are bound to get more complicated. Thompson is unperturbed, claiming that 2.7 million\u20133.1 million t of usable waste plastic sit within a 240 km radius of the planned plant. He also expects many states to pass extended producer responsibility laws. Such laws will finance new recycling infrastructure that could capture more waste plastics Nexus can use as a feedstock.<\/p>\n Nexus has also attracted strong backing. After an initial investment in 2015, media and automotive parts conglomerate Cox Enterprises led a $150 million investment round in 2023 and became Nexus\u2019s majority owner. Nexus also has supply contracts with LyondellBasell, Chevron Phillips, and Braskem for its first six new production lines in McDonough. And Chevron Phillips and Braskem own equity stakes in the company.<\/p>\n The cash and expertise of blue-chip investors is another advantage, Thompson says. Smaller companies don\u2019t have the required financial resources or know-how to scale up a pyrolysis plant. \u201cThese projects are tailor-made for a large petrochemical company,\u201d he says. \u201cThey typically have the resources to be able to carry a long development cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n But Thompson admits that enthusiasm for recycling is flagging. And companies like Nexus, which aim to keep the hope of pyrolysis alive, must now rack up technical and economic accomplishments.<\/p>\n At the same time,\u00a0the public is growing skeptical because of the technology\u2019s failures and the market is losing interest because of diminishing public pressure and the expense.<\/p>\n \u201cThree or four years ago, customer demand was really high,\u201d Thompson says. \u201cConsumer products companies were driving the market with voluntary commitments that were just way oversized.\u201d\u00a0Many of these firms have now quietly backed off those ambitions<\/a>.<\/p>\n Petrochemical companies that have been supporting pyrolysis firms with offtake agreements and equity investments have also lost the interest they had a few years ago, when business was booming. \u201cThey\u2019re not in a position now to take any risk,\u201d Thompson says.<\/p>\n Pyrolysis is looking less and less like it will be a panacea for the plastic waste crisis. But more success by firms like Nexus and ExxonMobil could position the technology to be one remedy for a plastic waste problem that will require many solutions.<\/p>\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n
\n How plastic pyrolysis works
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\n Pretreatment
\n <\/p>\n![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/257210-plasticgraphicweb1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Pyrolysis
\n <\/p>\n![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/257210-plasticgraphicweb2.jpg\")
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\n Upgrading
\n <\/p>\n![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/257210-plasticgraphicweb3.jpg\")
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\n Conversion
\n <\/p>\n![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/257210-plasticgraphicweb4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Polymers-and-Plastics---2026-Editorial-Calendar---258605.webp\")
\n A man in a blue work suit examines a vial of liquid. His nametag on the left says \u201cJeff,\u201d and the company name, Nexus Circular, is in blue lettering on the right.<\/p>\n
\n Nexus Circular<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/tullo.jpg\")
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