Dow and Mura Technology plan to locate Europe’s largest advanced recycling facility at Dow’s site in Böhlen, Germany

Australian-based low carbon technology pioneers, Licella Holdings (Licella), congratulate Mura Technology (Mura), UK-based developer and licensee of Licella’s Cat-HTR™ platform, on its announcement with Dow (NYSE: DOW), the world’s leading materials science company. The companies announced the next step in their ongoing collaboration to advance global plastic circularity. Mura plans to construct a new facility at Dow’s Böhlen site in Germany – the latest in a series of planned facilities across the U.S. and Europe to rapidly scale advanced recycling of post-consumer plastics that are difficult to recycle mechanically.  This project is targeted for a final investment decision by the end of 2023.

Mura’s new Böhlen facility in Germany, which is expected to be operational by 2025, would deliver approximately 120 kilotons per annum (KTA) of advanced recycling capacity at full run-rate. This and the other planned units expected to be constructed across Europe and the U.S. would collectively add as much as 600KTA of advanced recycling capacity by 2030 – and position Dow to become the largest consumer of circular feedstock for polyethylene production globally.

The Böhlen, Germany, site, expected to be co-located with Dow’s manufacturing facilities, would enable a significantly larger capacity for plastic waste and considerably increase the supply of fully circular feedstock to the industry.

The planned facility builds on Dow’s ongoing collaboration with Mura, first announced in 2021, with an initial project to construct the world’s first plant using Mura’s HydroPRS™ (Hydrothermal Plastic Recycling Solution) process, located in Teesside, UK, which is expected be operational in 2023.

At the core of Mura’s HydroPRS™ process is Licella’s Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor (Cat-HTR™), the world’s leading hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) technology. HTL is the next-generation of advanced plastic recycling, using supercritical water to convert waste plastics, otherwise destined for landfill, into the highest-yield of oil of any plastic to oil technology. In doing so, it unlocks an economically and environmentally sustainable circular economy for all plastic.

Dow aims to take advantage of co-location benefits, which could significantly reduce the cost of scaling advanced recycling facilities. In addition, co-location of Mura’s facilities at Dow locations would be expected to reduce carbon emissions by minimizing transportation of the offtake and as gas output from the advanced recycling process can be converted back to plastics, thereby ensuring no by-products go to waste.

Read the Dow and Mura Technology release here

Watch a video by New Scientist on the project here

Download the full media release from Licella here