Shell, one of the world’s largest energy companies created the Shell GameChanger program a few years ago to identify and help develop truly innovative technologies that could help get the company, and the planet, to a net zero emissions energy economy. Shell takes submissions every year and chooses the very few best ideas for participation. The goal is to help start-ups prove the commercial viability of their technologies through collaboration with Shell’s experienced staff and vast resources. If companies graduate, their solution has been validated by leading subject matter experts and is much closer to becoming a commercial reality.
Last week one of the participating companies, Aduro Clean Technologies (Nasdaq: ADUR) (CSE: ACT), announced its graduation from the GameChanger program. The company’s patented Hydrochemolytic™ technology has proven to be capable of recycling mixed plastic waste into the raw material used in the manufacturing of new plastics and other hydrocarbon-based products.
What Makes Aduro Different?
Despite society’s long-standing stated desire to recycle the vast and increasing amounts of plastic made each year, only about 10% of the more than 400 million tonnes produced globally actually gets recycled. Blame technology and the resulting economics.
Pretty much every plastic recycling system out there – mechanical, pyrolysis, advanced chemical – requires significant cleaning and sorting. Labels need to be removed, food waste cleaned, and different types of plastics separated because they can’t be processed together. All of this adds cost, time, energy use, and emissions to the process. Then there is the question of the utility of the end product, often plastic pellets or flakes (for mechanical recycling and some other processes) or fuels (which don’t really create circularity for plastics but which do create more emissions).
Along comes Aduro’s Hydrochemolytic technology, or HCT. The concept is simple – recycle mixed and contaminated plastic waste feedstock using a water-based system that operates at high efficiency but relatively low temperatures. The end result is a vast reduction in the cost of sorting and cleaning, coupled with a large decrease in energy use and carbon dioxide emissions.
Not only is it more efficient, diverse, and economic to operate than other solutions on the market, but HCT produces exactly the kind of output needed to make new plastics within the entrenched framework of the existing plastic manufacturing system.
Wait, How is Plastic Made?
Here is a very ‘crude’ explanation of how virgin plastic is made from oil. The oil is separated into various components or fractions at a refinery. One of those fractions is called naphtha, and it forms the basis for plastic.
Source: British Plastics Federation
Naphtha is broken down into smaller molecules like ethylene and propylene in facilities called steam crackers. Then chemicals are added to the small molecules to make them form longer chains called polymers (polyethylene and polypropylene, for instance), thick resins that are then made into all the various plastic products.
Aduro announced recently that its Hydrochemolytic™ oil, the output of its recycling system, was able to be substituted directly for naphtha into the steam cracking process. The recycled oil was used as-is, without any additional hydrotreatment or dilution. Steam crackers require very specific types of oil for their systems to work properly, and recycled oils almost always require modifications before being dropped into the cracking process.
Almost all plastics are made through the cracking process in very large facilities around the world. If we want to achieve circularity, we’ll have to use the existing footprint but supply it with recycled materials. Aduro just demonstrated, through trials conducted by an independent third party global organization that designs, licenses, and services large-scale petrochemical steam-cracking operations, that its circular oil can seamlessly replace crude-oil-derived naphtha at these plants.
Technology and Market Validated. What’s Next?
So Shell is confirming that the disruptive HCT solution works, and the product it creates can be plugged directly into the plastic-making process with excellent results. This seems like a system that needs to be implemented sooner rather than later if possible, and that’s just what Aduro is doing.
Having recently commissioned its Next Generation Process (NGP) Pilot Plant, the company is moving quickly into the design, site selection, and funding phases for its commercial-scale Demonstration Plant. The Demonstration Plant will likely begin construction in 2026 and is expected to be able to process about 8,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year. It will generate the first meaningful revenue for Aduro and is intended to prove the scalability, economic viability, and real-world functionality of HCT.
Aduro envisions building some of its own plants, but its longer-term vision is to license the technology to organizations interested in building their own. Some of HCT’s features lend themselves to the licensing model very well. The system is built with widely available industrial components which makes building it a much less formidable, and more affordable, task.
The technology is also highly scalable, making its implementation less dependent than current options on massive factories fed by large populations. Aduro can adapt to the size and needs of any potential clients, including smaller communities and businesses. A model built on licensing rather than factory building should be easier to grow across the globe, especially for a small company like Aduro.
Aduro updates are coming out regularly as the commercialization of HCT reaches its later stages. Investors are encouraged to pay attention and conduct their own due diligence. Shell and other multinational collaborators have done their research and found very promising results. Stay tuned.
