Last year in Jakarta, at the Asia Tech Forum our Closing the Loop: Circular Economy in Practice panel began with a deep dive into how refiners and technology providers are embedding circular economy principles across operations and product design.
The session began with a deep dive into how refiners and technology providers are embedding circular economy principles across operations and product design. Evonik highlighted that sustainability and circularity are now core components of its global strategy, with new additives and materials designed to enable chemical recycling and polymer circularity. The company has developed additives for pyrolysis oil upgrading and is actively investing in in-house recycling capabilities, such as a new pilot plant for polyurethane foam recycling, converting end-of-life materials into reusable feedstocks.
Evonik emphasized that collaboration across the value chain—from plastic collectors to technology providers—is crucial to accelerate the commercial readiness of circular technologies. Circularity is no longer a technical challenge; now it’s about creating the right partnerships and business models.
Scaling Plastic Circularity: The Feedstock and Cost Challenge
Honeywell UOP provided insights into the economic and logistical realities of scaling circular plastic solutions. While small-scale recycling hubs can successfully process waste, achieving commercial-scale output requires a massive increase in collection and sorting capacity.
Current feedstock availability and costs remain major bottlenecks, with the price of recyclable plastics rising sharply as demand for circular feedstocks grows. Honeywell noted that while pyrolysis oil can substitute for traditional feedstocks like vacuum gas oil, its variable composition, contaminants, and logistics make scaling difficult without targeted policy incentives and advanced pre-treatment technologies.
Scaling circularity requires feedstock security, better sorting, and policy alignment—not just technology readiness.
Indonesia’s Perspective: Localized Circular Solutions
Pertamina shared how Indonesia’s unique archipelagic geography presents both challenges and opportunities for circular economy implementation. With over 17,000 islands, large centralized facilities face high logistics costs for collecting and aggregating waste.
Pertamina is exploring modular and community-scale units capable of converting local waste—such as plastics or used cooking oil—into valuable fuels. This distributed circular model reduces transport emissions, supports local economies, and provides energy security to remote regions.
However, achieving scale will require stronger waste segregation systems and economic incentives to make collection and processing viable. A hybrid model combining small modular systems with scalable centralized plants offers the best path forward for Indonesia.
Low-Carbon Refining and Technology Adoption
The discussion then turned to refinery decarbonization and strategies to lower carbon intensity through both incremental improvements and transformational innovation. Honeywell UOP highlighted practical pathways to reduce emissions, such as:
- Optimizing heat exchange and energy recovery systems
- Improving catalyst activity to lower furnace firing
- Retrofitting existing assets in phased upgrades rather than major overhauls
The panel agreed that risk management frameworks for new technology adoption must evolve. The traditional approach of waiting years for proven results can hinder competitiveness, particularly as regional peers move faster with government-backed R&D programs.
Evonik presented a case study from its low-carbon plant in Singapore, designed to achieve net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions through vapor recompression and energy recovery systems, reducing CO₂ emissions by over 70% compared to conventional assets.
Pertamina shared updates on co-processing initiatives using used cooking oil to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), as well as ongoing R&D on locally formulated catalysts for hydroprocessing and FCC units.
Decarbonization will rely on both breakthrough technologies and smarter, incremental improvements to existing assets.
The Digital Frontier: AI, Automation, and Efficiency
Digital transformation was identified as a key enabler of operational excellence and carbon reduction. Evonik has deployed digital twins for plant design, commissioning, and project management, and is expanding their use into real-time operations.
These digital systems, combined with AI-driven predictive models, soft sensors, and operator chatbots, improve efficiency, minimize downtime, and support predictive maintenance.
Honeywell emphasized that AI and digitalization complement—not replace—human expertise. With sensor costs dropping dramatically, refiners can now monitor composition, energy usage, and hydrogen flows across the plant with real-time precision, unlocking new layers of efficiency.
AI enhances human decision-making—turning decades of operational experience into data-driven insight.
Key Takeaways
- Circularity requires collaboration—technology alone is not enough without value chain partnerships and financing.
- Feedstock logistics and policy frameworks remain the key barriers to scaling circular plastic recycling.
- Localized and modular approaches can unlock circularity in diverse geographies like Indonesia.
- Low-carbon refining demands both innovation and agility in adopting new technologies.
- AI and digitalization are critical tools for achieving real-time efficiency and predictive operations.
Panel Closing Remarks
The panel underscored that the refinery of the future will not emerge from a single innovation, but from the integration of circular economy principles, low-carbon technologies, and intelligent digital systems—all working together to create a sustainable, competitive downstream industry.
Efficiency, circularity, and digital intelligence are not just trends; they are the foundation of Asia’s next-generation energy landscape.
