Porsche AG and BASF SE, in collaboration with technology partner BEST - Bioenergy and Sustainable Technologies GmbH – have successfully completed a pilot project on recycling mixed waste from end-of-life vehicles.
The pilot project demonstrates the recyclability of high-performance plastics from automotive shredder residues (ASR) together with renewable raw materials. This mixture of plastic, film, paint, and foam residues is so complex that it can currently only be thermally recycled.
The pilot project shows that these automotive wastes can be recycled through gasification, a special type of chemical recycling, and returned to the automotive cycle.
This pilot project validates the viability of new sources of plastics and applications for chemical recycling in components. The ultimate goal is to source less primary material in the future and increase the proportion of recycled materials in vehicles. As part of the project, the chemically recycled material was used in the manufacturing process for steering wheels.
“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,” head of sustainability at Porsche AG Dr Robert Kallenberg, said.
“We are testing new recycling technologies with our direct partners in order to increase recirculate quotas, gain access to previously unusable recirculate sources and evaluate new processes for waste streams that are currently being thermally utilised.”
Porsche aims to use recycled materials in its vehicles and close resource cycles. In this context, the company has set itself the goal of increasing the proportion of verifiable secondary materials in its vehicle production. The pilot project can evaluate the potential of automotive shredder residues as a future recycling source and thus as a secondary raw material. It is thus a complementary alternative to mechanical recycling, which often cannot achieve this high quality. In addition, demand-driven scaling is possible in the future in connection with the so-called mass balance approach.
Defossilisation: First fully non-fossil gasification for the production of new plastics
In this project, a combined waste stream consisting purely of automotive waste and biomass was recycled in a gasification process for the first time. The resulting recycled raw material – the so-called synthesis gas and its derivatives – replaced 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.
The recycling innovation uses modern gasification technology from BEST GmbH to convert plastic waste and other residues into synthesis gas at high temperatures.
"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," BEST’s Dr. Matthias Kuba explained.
"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."
Keeping the technology spectrum broad
President of BASF’s performance materials division, Dr. Martin Jung, said the company co-ordinates its sustainability efforts on its 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,” he said.
“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.
"To optimally utilise the various waste recovery options and further develop all technologies in parallel, the appropriate regulatory framework is essential."
Background: Chemical recycling and mass balance
Chemical recycling can process plastic waste that cannot be mechanically recycled for technical, economic, or ecological reasons. Gasification is a variant of chemical recycling that can convert particularly mixed waste streams into valuable new raw materials, for example: plastic production.
When fed into large, complex, and continuously operated production plants such as the BASF Verbund facility, these new circular raw materials are mixed with conventional fossil raw materials and processed into plastic precursors. The new (secondary) raw materials are attributed using the mass balance approach. Products and sites are certified by independent auditors according to internationally recognised systems such as ISCC PLUS or REDcert.
Due to the high quality of the new raw materials, the resulting products have the quality of new goods and meet the demanding requirements of high-performance plastics, as they are particularly needed for safety-relevant automotive components.