The plant, which is said to be the largest advanced recycling facility in Europe, is the newest in a series of planned facilities across the US and Europe and the first at a Dow site

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Rendering of the MURA plant co-located at the Dow Böhlen site, Germany. (Credit: Mura Technology Limited)

Materials science company Dow and recycling firm Mura Technology have finalised the location for the advanced recycling facility at Dow’s site in Böhlen, Germany.

The plant, which is said to be the largest advanced recycling facility in Europe, is the newest in a series of planned facilities across the US and Europe and the first at a Dow site.

Dow said that a final investment decision for the project is expected by the end of 2023.

When fully operational in 2025, Mura’s new Böhlen facility in Germany will be able to offer 120 kilotons per annum (KTA) of advanced recycling capacity.

The facility, with others anticipated to be built in Europe and the US, would add up to 600KTA of advanced recycling capacity by 2030.

The move will position Dow to become the world’s largest user of circular feedstock for the manufacturing of polyethylene.

The new facility will expand on Dow’s ongoing partnership with Mura, which the two companies initially announced in 2021.

The initial project will be to create the world’s first plant employing Mura’s HydroPRS (Hydrothermal Plastic Recycling Solution) technology in Teesside, UK, and it will go into operation in 2023 with a 20KTA production line.

According to Dow, supercritical steam is used in Mura’s HydroPRS advanced recycling process to transform most types of plastics that were previously considered to be unrecyclable.

The Böhlen location will provide a bigger capacity for plastic waste and boost the supply of fully circular feedstock to the industry.

It is anticipated that the Böhlen site will be co-located with Dow’s production operations.

The circular feed would lessen reliance on virgin fossil-based feedstocks and would allow Dow to produce a recycled plastic that is required for high-end delicate markets.

Dow believes that the use of co-location can lower the cost of scaling up advanced recycling operations.

It will also reduce transportation of the offtake, minimise carbon emissions and ensure that no by-products go to waste by allowing gas output from the advanced recycling process to be turned back into plastics.

The company has set a climate and circularity aim to allow the collection, reuse, or recycling of one million metric tonnes of plastic by 2030.