ExxonMobil Corp.'s Baton Rouge, La., refinery is one of several company sites being considered for a chemical recycling facility similar to one the company already is operating in Texas.

David Oldreive, refinery manager in Baton Rouge for the oil giant, told an online roundtable his company currently is weighing incentives for the proposal with a decision expected in the months ahead.

"We would hope to get a final investment decision late this year [or] early next year on this project," he said during a webcast from the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.

ExxonMobil opened a chemical recycling facility at the company's Baytown, Texas, refinery late last year with a capacity to handle more than 80 million pounds of difficult-to-recycle plastics each year.

That opening, and consideration of locations elsewhere, comes as the company has made a commitment to create 1 billion pounds of chemical recycling capacity by the end of 2026.

There is a suite of chemical recycling technologies but the most well-known is pyrolysis, which uses heat and pressure in the absence of oxygen to break down plastics into oil, gas and char. That's the process being used by ExxonMobil in Baytown.

» Publication Date: 30/03/2023

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