From feedstocks to plastics: the rise of bio-based alternatives
By Callum Colford
The use of bio-based material in petrochemical and plastics markets has come into ever-sharper focus this year as pressure grows from governments and wider society to plot a way from a fossil-based economy to a sustainable model with a far lower environmental impact.
As the plastics industry looks to its own role within the wider energy transition, bio-plastics are one of the main options for retaining the benefits brought by the use of plastics while addressing environmental concerns.
Although bio-plastics is a wide term which can refer either to material that is produced from a bio-based feedstock, material that is biodegradable but produced from a fossil-based feedstock, or material that is both biodegradable and produced from a bio-based source, this report will focus primarily on material that is produced from bio-based feedstocks.
The range and specifications of alternative bio-based products vary substantially, but most retain almost identical properties to fossil-based products, having the ability to be directly blended with them to serve the range of uses fossil products currently have.
Needless to say, fully formed bio-plastics don’t grow on trees. Those parts of the petrochemical industry that have moved into bio-products are adopting a variety of approaches to achieve long-term, sustainable alternatives to fossil-based plastics, in order to provide further options for polymers in the circular economy.
As with traditional fossil-based petrochemicals and plastics, the route to creating bio-products begins with the feedstock, passing through phases that will sound familiar to those used to the way the fossil-based industry works; from cracker feeds to bio-olefins and bio-aromatics and ultimately to the finished bio-plastics.
S&P Global Platts here gives an overview of the industry through these critical stages, highlighting developments across the industry from bio-naphtha down to bio-based plastics, as well as newer approaches being adopted by industry such as the mass-balance concept.