A world first! Mura supercritical water technology solves the world's plastic recycling problem

March 18-20, 2025 · Zhangjiagang

In February 2025, the opening of a factory in northeast England attracted the attention of the global environmental protection community. This world's first commercial supercritical water plastic recycling plant, built by London startup Mura Technology , claims to be able to convert "non-recyclable" mixed plastic waste into recycled plastic raw materials, and is expected to subvert the limitations of traditional mechanical recycling and pyrolysis technologies. "Nature" magazine analyzed this technology in the form of a cover story, calling it "a new answer to the plastic pollution crisis."

Editor's note

According to OECD forecasts, global plastic waste will exceed 1 billion tons per year in 2060, while the current recycling rate is less than 10%. Mura's global expansion plan (building factories in 6 countries including Germany, the United States, and Singapore) and the entry of giants such as Mitsubishi and LG Chem may inject a shot in the arm for the industry. Supercritical water technology has opened a new chapter in the plastic circular economy, but its true revolutionary nature may not lie in laboratory breakthroughs, but in whether it can balance environmental benefits, economic feasibility and policy compliance on a commercial scale. As Nature said: "This may be humanity's key line of defense against the flood of plastics."

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Technological breakthrough: How does supercritical water tame mixed plastics?

The dilemma of plastic recycling is that only 10%-15% of plastic waste is recycled each year in the world, and the rest is landfilled, incinerated or abandoned (OECD data). Traditional mechanical recycling relies on clean, single-material plastic streams, and although pyrolysis technology can process mixed plastics, it has been criticized for its high energy consumption, low efficiency (20% of raw materials are converted into useless coke) and high carbon emissions.

Mura's "Supercritical Hydrothermal Liquefaction Technology" (Hydro-PRT) provides a new idea: in a reactor at 400°C and 220 times the atmospheric pressure, water enters a supercritical state, with both gas permeability and liquid solubility, and can evenly decompose plastic molecular chains. Compared with pyrolysis, this technology reduces carbon emissions by 80%, and can process mixed plastics containing food residues, inks and other pollution. The final product is hydrocarbon compounds such as naphtha and gas oil, which can be refined and resynthesized into plastic raw materials such as polyethylene and polypropylene. If successfully operated, it will create a new model for plastic recycling manufacturing and reduce dependence on fossil raw materials.

Core Advantages

• Tolerance to pollution: Supercritical water can separate plastic molecules from impurities, reducing pretreatment costs;
• High efficiency and low carbon: Degradation is completed in 30 minutes, and carbon emissions are only 50% of traditional oil refining;
• Flexible raw materials: Theoretically compatible with all types of plastics, currently focusing on polyolefins (accounting for 2/3 of plastic waste).

Mura says it is the world's first plant to recycle plastics on a commercial scale using this method. Its success is crucial - if it can operate profitably, it will promote the construction of more similar plants around the world. The plant currently still has strict screening requirements for plastic waste raw materials - it must go through a crushing and sorting process similar to mechanical recycling, and similar to pyrolysis plants, not all output can be recycled into plastic, so some critics believe that the process should not be classified as recycling - Mura denies this accusation. These practical problems have raised questions about the prospects for plastic pollution control: Can chemical recycling deliver on its promised potential? The concept is not a complete failure - but the complexity of actual operation makes it less revolutionary than advertised.

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Controversy and Challenges: Real cycle or a “greenwashing” gimmick?

Although Mura claims that its technology will promote a "true circular economy", environmental organizations and academics still have doubts:

1. Controversy over product destination: About 20% of the output is heavy residual oil, which is used as asphalt additives or fuel, and has been criticized as "incomplete chemical recycling." Zero Waste Europe, an EU environmental organization, pointed out: "Converting waste plastics into fuel is still essentially a linear economy."
2. Dependence on classification and pre-processing: Factories still need to crush and sort waste plastics, which overlaps with the mechanical recycling process, weakening the "revolutionary" nature of the technology;
3. Scale bottleneck: The annual processing capacity of the first plant is only 23,000 tons, and IDTechEx predicts that by 2034, the total global chemical recycling volume will be only 17 million tons, less than 5% of future plastic waste.

In response, Mura CEO said: "Our goal is to reintegrate plastic 'waste' from landfill and incineration back into the industrial chain , rather than competing with mechanical recycling."

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Policy drivers: How are regulations reshaping the plastics economy?

Behind the promotion of technology are the strict regulations on recycled plastic content in various countries:

• The EU requires that by 2030, plastic bottles contain 30% recycled materials and food packaging contain 10%;
• The UK imposes a punitive tax on plastic packaging that contains less than 30% recycled content.

Mura's partner, chemical giant Dow Chemical, said bluntly: "Chemical recycling is the only way to meet regulations." However, the calculation method of "recycled content" has triggered fierce competition. Environmental organizations have revealed that some companies have falsely labeled the recycling ratio through the "free allocation method" and affixed 100% recycled labels to high-priced products. The British government stopped this practice in October 2024 and forced the use of the "fuel exemption mass balance method" to ensure that the recycled carbon chain is only counted in plastic products.

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ChinaReplas2025

The 31st China Plastics Recycling and Regeneration Conference

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