OMV and Wood sign MOU to commercially license ReOil technology

In Austria, OMV and Wood signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enter into a mutually exclusive collaboration agreement for the commercial licensing of OMV’s proprietary ReOil technology. The two companies aim to agree on a binding cooperation by mid-2023.

ReOil® is a patented chemical recycling technology developed by OMV, which converts end-of-life plastic waste into pyrolysis oil, a valuable resource. These end-of-life plastics are not suitable to be mechanically recycled and would otherwise be landfilled or sent to waste incineration. The ReOil process operates under moderate pressure and normal refinery operating temperatures. The pyrolysis oil is then primarily used again to produce high-quality, sustainable plastics. OMV was one of the first companies to develop a chemical recycling technology for used plastics more than a decade ago. 

A ReOil® pilot plant has been operating in the OMV refinery in Schwechat, Austria, since 2018 and has been processing end-of-life plastics for more than 17,000 hours to date. In December 2021, OMV took the final investment decision to build a 16,000 t/year ReOil demo plant at the OMV site in Schwechat, which aims to start operation in 2023. The demo plant, like the existing pilot plant, will have International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC PLUS) ensuring traceability along the supply chain and verification that the value chain meets environmental and social standards. The demo plant will comply to the highest industrial safety standards and will be fully integrated within the petrochemical site at the Schwechat refinery, enabling OMV to guarantee the best use of resources and maximum efficiency.  

By the end of 2026, OMV plans to further scale-up ReOil into a fully industrial-scale chemical recycling plant with a processing capacity of 200,000 t/year at the Schwechat refinery. The highly efficient and fully scalable technology displaces conventional feedstock for plastic production and can generate substantial greenhouse gas emission savings compared to plastic incineration, as concluded in a life cycle assessment conducted by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in 2022.