Encina advances plans for Pennsylvania facility

Six years ago, the Woodlands, Texas-based Encina began as a small company focused on generating high-value chemicals from low-quality feedstocks. In 2020, the company developed what it calls a proprietary advanced recycling process that it now hopes to expand at facilities globally.

“We realized we could make a real impact on the global need for better solutions for end-of-life plastics and the imperative for more sustainable living,” says Sheida Sahandy, chief sustainability officer and counsel at Encina.

Sahandy says Encina’s technology works at the molecular level by splitting polymer chains to return them to their original monomers, such as benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX) and propylene, all of which she says can be used to make new plastic products.

While Encina has been testing its technology at its circular chemicals facility in San Antonio, Sahandy says the company wants to start constructing commercial-scale facilities across the globe. Encina has announced plans to construct a $1.1 billion commercial-scale advanced recycling facility in Point Township, Pennsylvania. From this plant, Encina plans to convert postconsumer plastic scrap into feedstock to manufacture new products.

Sahandy says the company has completed financing rounds to pursue the project. She says investors include private individuals as well as institutional investors such as IMM Investment Global Ltd. and SW Recycle Fund.

Once constructed, the Point Township facility will process 450,000 tons of postconsumer materials per year. According to a news release from Encina, the facility will provide about 300 jobs once fully operational.

“We are excited to bring new advancements in sustainable manufacturing practices,” Sahandy says. “The region also provides a skilled workforce, educational institutions with relevant degrees and programs and proximity and access to markets. Our plant can also create a long-term economic impact in the region it is located and help create the foundation for ‘green’ jobs.”

Plans for the plant

In 2020, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed House Bill 1808 into law to support advanced recycling of hard-to-recycle plastics in the state. Sahandy says she hopes Encina’s proposed Point Township facility will help to ensure fewer hard-to-recycle plastics from the region end up in area landfills.

Once operational, Sahandy says the Point Township plant will source postconsumer materials from nearby material recovery facilities (MRFs), and it will mostly consume plastics Nos. 3-7. “We are actively exploring opportunities to partner with local material recovery facilities and new opportunities for sourcing partnerships,” she says.

Although Encina says it has completed financing rounds for the plant, the facility won’t be formalized until the company secures all relevant permits and approvals necessary. Sahandy says Encina is focused on finalizing permit application filings this year, with goals to begin construction of and hiring for the plant in 2023.

Sahandy says Encina wants to commission sorting operations at the plant by the end of 2023 and to ramp up to commercial-scale operations by 2025.

Although advanced recycling technologies can be limited in the types of plastic they can process, Sahandy says Encina’s technology processes “a wide range” of plastic, particularly Nos. 3-7. Also, while some advanced recycling facilities are limited to producing naphtha, which requires additional processing by petrochemical refineries, she says Encina’s technology produces BTX. She describes BTX as aromatic hydrocarbons, which are different formations of carbons and hydrogens.

Sahandy adds that the facility will have a five-step, circular process for operations:

1. sourcing plastics from regional MRFs;
2. delivering materials on enclosed trucks to the site;
3. applying a catalytic process to pull apart molecules of these plastics and break materials back down to smaller building blocks;
4. shipping these liquid products to manufacturers that can drop them into their manufacturing processes to create new plastic products; and
5. those plastic products will be used by consumers who will discard them for future recycling.

Questions surrounding sustainability

Despite its goal to develop new solutions for end-of-life plastics, some environmental advocacy groups have expressed concerns about Encina’s proposed Point Township plant.

In September, Randall Yoxheimer, a Point Township chairman of the locally elected board of supervisors told Inside Climate News, a nonprofit environmental news organization, that he had some concerns about the lack of information on the proposed plant. “I am concerned about the functionality of this whole thing,” he said. “The fact that it’s prototypical concerns me.”

According to the article from Inside Climate News, there also are concerns about greenwashing from companies constructing proposed advanced recycling facilities.

Additionally, advanced recycling technologies, such as the one Encina hopes to apply at its facility in Point Township, tend to face challenges related to scalability and feasibility. According to a report titled Rethinking Plastics in a Circular Economy that was produced by Economist Impact earlier this year, many advanced recycling technologies are in early stages of development, with few facilities having successfully commercialized their processes.

However, Sahandy says, the new plant’s equipment, machinery and most of its processes and technologies aren’t what she would call “prototypical” and have been used for decades in recycling, energy and chemical industries.

“We are currently, safely implementing our proprietary process at various scales in San Antonio,” Sahandy says. “The Texas site has been in operation since August 2020. Our Point Township facility will be our first commercial-scale facility and will serve as a template for future projects.”

Sahandy adds that the proposed Point Township facility would divert up to 450,000 tons of plastic material per year, and the materials it receives would be collected and sorted at least once by a third party at a separate facility before arriving at Encina’s operations. She says the company also plans to conduct additional sorting in enclosed buildings and containers on-site.

“We expect that over 90 percent of the incoming material will be recovered for our process or introduced back to mechanical recycling markets. The fraction that cannot be used in our process nor resold into the existing recycling markets will become part of the municipal waste stream,” she says.

Sahandy says she understands public concerns surrounding how the proposed facility might impact the environment and specifically the Susquehanna River that runs through the town. She adds that Encina is in the permitting process, aiming to meet the requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission.

“We are confident that the water returned to the river will meet or exceed all local and state regulations and constant monitoring systems will be used to provide a backstop,” Sahandy says. “Mechanisms such as retention ponds and a water treatment facility on-site to remove contaminants and to adjust the temperature for reintegration will ensure our facility will not harm this invaluable ecosystem.

“The best solution to protecting the river from microplastics is to reduce the amount of plastic waste that is decomposing at landfills or ending up on the sides of roads and eventually washed into waterways,” she continues. “The best solution for protecting our air from noxious emissions from incinerators is to use processes that do not burn the plastic. There is no incineration or burning of plastic waste in our process, and byproducts will not be released into the air or water. They will be captured in a closed system, with many of the byproducts reused in our manufacturing process. Additionally, much of the power we use will come from the site-generated fuel we harness as a byproduct of our process, significantly reducing our net energy consumption from any other source.”