ReOil: 200,000 kg of plastic waste recycled with OMV's circular economy pilot project

OMV's ReOil pilot plant at the Schwechat Refinery in Austria recycles post-consumer plastics and turns those plastics into synthetic crude, which in turn can be processed into any desired refinery product. This innovative chemical recycling technology facilitates a circular economy of post-consumer plastics by recycling them into create value-added products, thereby reducing dependence on natural resources and lowering carbon intensity, as compared to standard oil processing. Substituting crude oil with post-consumer plastics synthetic crude is estimated to lead to 45% lower CO2 emissions in the use of this product and 20% lower energy demand per t of the product.

Since its start in 2018 the ReOil pilot plant managed to successfully recycle 200,000 kilograms of plastic waste. This amount corresponds to what approximately 2.650 households produce in plastic waste from packaging within an entire year – equivalent to the population of a small town like Melk in Austria.

We plan to do one more scale-up step of the plant by 2022 by increasing the post-consumer plastic feedstock capacity to 16,000 - 20,000 t per year, before aiming at building the final industrial-scale capacity plant by 2025.

You can find more information on OMV's circular economy project ReOil here.