Guangdong Jieyang Puts into Operation the World's First "One-Step" Waste Plastic Recycling Plant, Processing 200,000 Tons of Mixed Plastics Annually

Guangdong Jieyang Dongyue Chemical recently successfully completed the trial production of its world's first deep catalytic cracking unit that can process 200,000 tons of mixed waste plastics annually in the Greater Nanhai Petrochemical Industrial Zone.

According to China Daily, the plant is operated by Guangdong Dongyue Chemical Company. The unit uses the world's first "one-step" chemical recycling process, which does not require manual sorting and directly converts various mixed low-value waste plastics into high-value-added chemical raw materials with a product yield of more than 92%. This efficiency is much higher than the traditional two-step method, and has obvious cost advantages when the crude oil price is higher than US$45 per barrel. It maximizes the use of hydrocarbon resources in waste plastics and reduces carbon dioxide emissions to near zero.

After completing 72 hours of continuous stable feeding operation and producing the first batch of qualified products, the unit marks that the technology has been successfully applied from laboratory to industrial scale. According to experts' calculations, if the process is operated at a scale of 50 million tons of waste plastics per year, it can replace 100 million to 150 million tons of crude oil as chemical raw materials (about 20% of China's annual imports), reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 250 million tons per year.

Local and provincial governments reportedly fully support this initiative, and Jieyang aims to become a global plastic chemical recycling center.

Currently, the project is looking to build a 200,000-ton demonstration unit into a replicable technical template, and plans to expand the overall scale to 3 million tons/year in the future, forming a complete circular industrial chain including waste plastics processing, chemical raw materials production and deep processing. This model is expected to gather recycled plastic processing and green chemical manufacturing companies in Jieyang, and promote the transformation of the Greater Nanhai Petrochemical Industrial Zone into a green and low-carbon new material highland.

Wang Shaole, deputy secretary of the Jieyang Municipal Party Committee, said: "Through deep catalytic cracking, low-value mixed waste plastics can be directly converted into high-value chemical raw materials in one step, which will effectively solve the problem of plastic pollution and achieve high-value recycling. With the vigorous promotion and application of this project in the next few years, it is expected to help ease China's external dependence on crude oil and contribute Guangdong's wisdom and Chinese solutions to the development of a green circular economy in the world."