CYNAR: A PORTLAOISE firm has signed a deal worth €70m with a leading British waste management firm that will use its unique clean technology to convert non-recyclable waste plastic into diesel.
Cynar will build 10 plants in Britain on sites owned by Sita, a leading UK waste and resource management firm.
The progress of the business will be watched closely by Sita’s French-based parent company, Suez Environment, a global waste, waste water and water utility firm that has an annual turnover of €12 billion and employs 78,000 people.
“If everything runs smoothly with Sita, then more of our conversion plants could be rolled out throughout Europe,” said Michael Murray, Cynar’s managing director.
As a result of the deal, 50 new full-time jobs will be created at Rockwell Automation in Cork, which will manufacture the plants. Their development and construction will be jointly financed by Sita and Suez Environment’s venture fund, Blue Orange.
After selling a telecoms business in Britain in 2003, Murray returned to Ireland and then set about finding a waste plastic conversion technology that he could work with.
Having found what he believed to be the best one, and with some funding from Enterprise Ireland, he spent €8 million building a plant in Co Laois. The technology required further development however, and so he put together a team of researchers, engineers and consultants Foster Wheeler.
After much trial and error, they honed the technology to the point where it worked properly.
Mixed waste plastic, such as yoghurt pots, food wrappers and other packaging found in the average household bin, is first sorted and separated before being compacted and put through one of Cynar’s plants. This avoids it going to landfill, which is expensive and where it slowly decomposes while harming the environment.
Using liquefaction, pyrolysis (thermochemical decomposition of material at elevated temperatures in the absence of oxygen) and distillation, the plastic is converted into diesel, kerosene, light oil and a non-condensable gas that can be burned cleanly to generate energy.
“Five of our plants in the UK would provide enough fuel for Sita’s 1,800 trucks that collect waste all around the country. This gives the company a very low carbon footprint and we have calculated that our diesel has a 20 to 30 per cent lower carbon footprint than conventional diesel,” Murray said.
Each of Cynar’s plants will profitably divert 6,000 tonnes of plastics away from landfill every year.
Each tonne of waste plastic is converted into 950 litres of usable fuel: 700 litres of diesel, 200 litres of kerosene to power the plant’s generators, and the rest in usable gases.
