SK Geo Centric announed on Oct. 19 that it will combine efforts with South Korean pyrolysis company to reach its goal of being the world’s largest urban oil field corporation based on plastic waste recycling.
SK Geo Centric disclosed its heart of green transformation, SK Innovation Institute of Environmental Science & Technology, and a factory that adopts pyrolysis oil technology of Eco Creation, a partner of the company.
SK Geo Centric has made a new start in September under a new corporate name signifying eco-friendly innovation centered on the earth and shared the financial story, revolving around the evolution to become the world’s largest eco-friendly urban oil field company that extracts oils from recycling plastic wastes.
Especially, the cooperation among three partners: Eco Creation, a South Korean company specialized in pyrolysis; SK Geo Centric, which is equipped with know-hows from its traditional chemical business; and SK Innovation’s Institute of Environmental Science & Technology, drew particular attention in that it will make a significant contribution to the establishment of the plastic waste circular economy by advancing pyrolysis technology and the achievement of the goal of establishing urban oil field company.
SK Innovation’s Institute of Environmental Science & Technology is the center of eco-friendly R&Ds for SK Geo Centric’s green transformation, which includes recycling technologies, 3R (Reduce, Replace, Recycle) solution, eco-friendly material development, etc. It offers eco-friendly energy and material-based solutions to support the conversion from Carbon to Green business, which is the gist of SK Geo Centric’s financial story, as well as all subsidiaries of SK Innovation.
To cite one primary endeavor made by the Institute of Environmental Science & Technology for establishing a plastic circular economy, there is chemical recycling technology development and application.
Concerning pyrolysis technology, one of the chemical recycling technologies, SK Geo Centric applied pyrolysis oil produced from the domestic SMEs specialized in plastic waste pyrolysis for the purpose of co-prosperity and win-win cooperation with SMEs, and employed the pyrolysis oil as the process fuel for its refinery and petrochemical processes for the first time in Korea and continues to engage in research for pyrolysis oil quality improvement.
In considering the gravity of the issue associated with plastic wastes, in addition, SK Geo Centric determined to secure a core pyrolysis technology on its own and consequently pursues a two-track strategy by seeking to construct a large-scale pyrolysis plant that combines SK’s own impurity removal technology through a global technology partnering.
So far, pyrolysis oil has not been considered as a feedstock oil due to concerns over air pollutant emission and facility corrosions caused by impurities such as chlorine. In cooperation with SK Geo Centric, the Institute of Environmental Science & Technology developed and applied post-treatment technology that eliminates impurities in pyrolysis oil, thereby turning it into eco-friendly feedstock oil.
In business partnership with a U.S. pyrolysis oil manufacturer, Brightmark LLC, SK Geo Centric is going to construct a large-scale pyrolysis plant, which embodies the combined global with SK Geo Centric’s own pyrolysis technologies and is scheduled to make a commercial operation in 2024. It marks the genuine birth of urban oil field where annual 200,000 tons of plastic wastes are recycled and produce about 1,080 thousand pyrolysis oil/year.
