Dr. Robert C. Schucker

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Novel Pyrolysis Process for Agricultural Film

Dr. Robert Schucker, President, P2C Technology Corp

Advanced (chemical) recycling is a critical part of the Circular Economy, as mechanical recycling alone cannot meet the overall recycling targets set by major corporations. While there are adequate supplies of waste plastic spread over the United States, collecting these materials, sorting them and transporting the sorted waste to existing advanced recycling (pyrolysis) plants is costly. As little as two years ago it seemed that there was more pyrolysis capacity announced for just the U.S. Gulf Coast than could be supplied with feedstock. But much of that promised capacity has not materialized; and today, it is the lack of cost-effective pyrolysis capacity that is the rate limiting step.    For more than a year P2C Technology Corporation has been developing a novel catalytic advanced recycling process that works extremely well with polyolefins like agricultural films (LDPE). It produces a high quality pyoil that has a final boiling point more than 250 °C lower than pyoil from straight thermal conversion, all with little or no coke production. This presentation will discuss results from laboratory studies that explore the effect of temperature and catalyst on product quality using advanced analytical techniques such as GC-VUV and high-resolution gas chromatography to characterize the product pyoil. Commercialization of this process is targeted for 2027 in modular 5 - 10 KTA units that can be distributed throughout the U.S. closer to the feedstock supplies.

Dr. Robert (Bob) Schucker is a seasoned veteran of the chemical and petrochemical industries with forty-eight years of technical and managerial experience. He currently serves as the President of P2C Technology Corporation, a Texas corporation that consults with companies in the advanced (chemical) and mechanical recycling spaces. 

Prior to assuming this role, Bob spent eight years with SABIC leading R&D teams involved in development of novel advanced recycling technology, oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) and oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene using oxygen ion transport membranes (ITM). 

Prior to joining SABIC, for 13 years Bob served as the CEO of Trans Ionics Corporation, a developer of innovative separation-based technology for the energy industry which he founded after a 23 year career with Exxon Corporation where he worked in Corporate Research as well as Downstream R&D. 

A prolific inventor with 56 issued patents, he has been successful at identifying critical needs, creating/reorganizing companies to meet those needs, recruiting key team members, raising capital and planning/executing programs directed toward commercializing advanced technologies in the multi-billion dollar energy industry. In addition to his business start-up and operations experience, he has strong leadership and communications skills, crosscutting experience in multiple energy fields as well as forecasting, capital planning and investor relations experience.