TeardownOctober 3, 2026
Plastic pyrolysis: nameplate capacity is not operating performance
Closures and underutilisation expose the gap between making an oil and running a profitable plastic-to-plastic system.
Writing
Explainers, teardowns, and myth-busting on waste management systems and green engineering.
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Teardown posts
TeardownSeptember 23, 2026
Bobine's 'electrified plastic recycling': striking numbers, no independent evidence
The French startup claims +45% yield, −60% energy and −45% cost by heating a catalyst with induction to turn plastic waste into olefins. Every figure is self-reported, and none has a baseline.
TeardownSeptember 16, 2026
HBI's EVA3: Four Known Sludge Processes, Wired Into One. No Numbers Yet.
Hydrothermal carbonisation, gasification, energy recovery and phosphorus capture in a single automated plant near Treviso. The integration is the novelty — and the performance data is absent.
TeardownSeptember 15, 2026
Pirelli, Pyrum, BASF and Synthos: A Tyre Loop With an Accounting Step in the Middle
Four companies, six steps, and one link where the recycled content is attributed rather than physically traced. The pyrolysis is real. The loop is partly bookkeeping.
TeardownSeptember 12, 2026
Aduro's Hydrochemolytic Route: Water-Mediated Plastic Conversion, and the Refinery Problem It Does Not Escape
Aduro says its water-based chemistry converts waste plastic and heavy oil at lower temperatures than pyrolysis. Even if that holds, the output is still a feedstock that a refinery has to finish.
TeardownSeptember 3, 2026
Anferra Says Grinding Sludge Becomes Ferric Chloride and Hydrogen. Here Is What Is Missing.
A startup claims up to 90% iron recovery from steel grinding sludge, a saleable coagulant, hydrogen as a by-product and a negative carbon figure. Almost none of the process detail behind those numbers has been published.
TeardownAugust 26, 2026
Two "direct recycling" startups just got $150M from DOE
Nth Cycle took $100M and Princeton NuEnergy $50M out of the DOE's $500M battery round. Both have operating plants and third-party numbers — which is more than most. Neither has solved the part a grant cannot buy: feedstock.
TeardownAugust 19, 2026
Does BASF's tyre-derived wall paint close the loop?
End-of-life tyres go into a pyrolysis reactor; a certified share of recycled feedstock comes out attributed to a tin of interior paint. The chemistry is real, the audit is real, and the word doing the most work is "attributed".
TeardownAugust 18, 2026
HUI has a waste-to-SAF licence. It does not yet have a plant
On 17 August, Hydrogen Utopia International bought a $500,000 UK licence for plasma gasification aimed at sustainable aviation fuel. A licence is a real asset. It is also nine milestones short of a litre of jet fuel.
TeardownAugust 13, 2026
Divert's 2.5-million-pound food-to-energy claim: circular loop or scoped case study?
Divert and US Cold Storage say 2.5 million pounds of unsold food became renewable natural gas and fertiliser in 15 months. The operating facts are solid. The carbon accounting behind them is not published.
TeardownAugust 8, 2026
A KitKat wrapper made from soft plastics: closed loop, or mass-balance proof of concept?
Nine and a half tonnes of pyrolysis oil, five tonnes of resin, seven million wrappers. A real supply chain ran end to end - and almost none of the numbers that would prove it works were published.
TeardownAugust 6, 2026
"Two Indonesian waste-to-energy projects secured" - award, milestone, or conditional headline?
SUS ENVIRONMENT says it was selected as preferred partner for two Indonesian WtE projects. The announcement contains no capacity, financing, schedule or emissions data - and a Conditional LOA is not a project.
TeardownAugust 5, 2026
Casablanca's $1.5B waste-to-energy bet: circular solution or combustion lock-in?
A 33.5-year exclusive treatment concession, three combustion lines and roughly 1 TWh a year. The contracts are signed. The financing, the emissions baseline and the recycling question are not.
TeardownAugust 5, 2026
Tire-to-fuels campus: breakthrough, or a press-release milestone?
Waste Energy says its Midland, Texas campus has entered final commissioning. That is a real construction milestone — and it is not the same thing as proven commercial scale.
TeardownAugust 1, 2026
Reading the BITS Pilani Wastewater Claim Line by Line
Six nines of disinfection, 90% organics removal, reusable water and biogas — announced without an energy balance, a cost figure, or a recovery yield. A teardown of what the numbers do and do not say.