Bobine's 'electrified plastic recycling': striking numbers, no independent evidence

Bobine, a French startup founded in 2023, raised $14M (€13M) in February 2026 to build an industrial demonstrator with Michelin in Clermont-Ferrand. The pitch: electrify the most energy-hungry step in petrochemistry and feed it with plastic nobody can mechanically recycle.

Olefins — ethylene and propylene — are normally made by steam cracking fossil feedstock at 850–900 °C. Bobine combines heterogeneous catalysis (a solid catalyst drives the reaction) with electromagnetic induction, which heats the catalyst directly instead of the whole reactor. Plastic waste goes in; olefins come out, destined for new polymer.

The technology comes from the CNRS/University of Strasbourg ICPEES lab, licensed via SATT Conectus, with Bpifrance support.

• Relative, not absolute. +45% of what? Neither the baseline yield nor the achieved yield is given.
• Scale-up of unknown size. 1,000× from an unspecified lab scale to an unspecified pilot.
• Feedstock unnamed. "Non-recyclable plastic" could mean clean polyolefins or PVC-contaminated mixed waste. Performance would differ enormously.
• Catalyst unknowns. Lifetime, cost and replacement frequency are not disclosed — often the deciding economics in catalytic recycling.

Heating only the catalyst is a plausible route to big energy savings, and electrifying cracking addresses both fossil fuel use and emissions. A Michelin partnership gives the project a real test site and several thousand planned operating hours.

A published yield on a named feedstock, energy per tonne of olefin, catalyst life, and an independent LCA. Commercial deployment is targeted for 2030; competitors are already at demo or commercial scale. Until then, treat the headline percentages as marketing.