Electrification of gasification-based chemical recycling – A techno-economic assessment

Gasification-based chemical recycling can be one of the key technologies to close the carbon loop on non-recyclable plastic waste as well as other challenging waste streams in order to reduce emissions and provide carbon to the chemical industry. However, gasification process chains exhibit limited carbon recovery to products due to intrinsic CO<inf>2</inf> production. This can be counteracted by electrification, either by integration of plasma into the gasification or by integration of electrolytic hydrogen into the process chain. For a representative plastic waste sorting residue stream, these electrification pathways are compared to non-electrified gasification and assessed from a techno-economic perspective based on thermodynamic modeling. The results show that electrification has the potential to increase carbon recovered to the main product by 30 to 47%pts., with almost full recovery possible for hydrogen. Economically, plasma gasification is favorable, showing 20% higher net present value, while a 50% reduction in net present value was identified for hydrogen, both in comparison to the non-electrified reference case. Additionally, plasma gasification was found to have the lowest levelized cost of production of around 635 €/t of methanol of all electrified cases. As a key influencing parameter, cost of electricity is identified. These findings indicate that plasma integration into waste gasification process chains is a promising pathway for future low-emission waste management.