SK Innovation, SK Group`s energy and electric vehicle (EV) battery unit, will back the campaign to make Jeju island cleaner by sourcing plastic wastes for power supply.

It signed a memorandum of understanding with Jeju Clean Energy on Friday to further develop the latter’s pyrolysis-based waste-to-energy conversion technology under the company’s sustainable management initiative dubbed ‘Green Balance’ announced last May.

Under the MOU, the two will cooperate in research to improve and optimize the technology to produce the high quality alternative fuel oil by the pyrolysis of mixed plastic waste. They also agreed to jointly study ways to diversify applications of pyrolysis-derived fuel oil and raise its value.

Pyrolysis, a concept to reverse the process to make plastics and plastic bags, enables the chemical decomposition of waste plastics with heating in the absence of oxygen, turning waste plastics into viable petrochemical feedstock.

Jeju Clean Energy, a Korean company with patented technologies, has run a pyrolysis plant in Jeju since 2013. It receives waste plastics from various sources and converts them into fuel oil distributed to local power plants, paper and ascon producers.

SK Innovation said it will apply its know-how in process and catalyst technology to Jeju Clean Energy’s pyrolysis technology to create synergy in many areas including process optimization and value addition.

By Han Ye-kyung and Minu Kim

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