CHEMICAL RECYCLING | PROJECTS
gies, and gather data on fibre-to-fibre recycling as well as circularity models. “We have already done a lot of tests, although
not yet at an industrial level. We are working on steps for waste preparation,” says Ladent. “We are extremely confident that polyester textile recycling will be an important milestone for Carbios.” The beauty of the process is that it is tolerant of contamination, says Ladent. “This means that we can process multilayer trays, for example.” The plant could work with PET bottle flakes, but given the price that would need to be paid for them, this is an unlikely option. Ladent says around 8-9% of PET post-consumer waste in Europe is in the form of food trays, which are currently either landfilled or incinerated, so prices are much lower. Carbios has created an LCA that shows its
process has associated CO2 emissions that are 46% lower than with virgin PET bottles with a single life. Further work will provide a comparison with other PET depolymerisation processes and mechanical recycling. In August, Carbios joined the four-year White-
Cycle project, launched with the ambition that by 2030 the uptake and deployment of its circular solution will lead to the annual recycling of more than 2m tonnes of PET. The consortium intends to develop various new processes, including: innovative sorting technologies; a pre-treatment for recuperated PET plastic content, followed by the Carbios depolymerisation process; repolymeri- sation; and fabrication and quality verification of new products made of recycled materials.
Reaction technology PET manufacturer Equipolymers and technology start-up Rittec Umwelttechnik announced a cooperation in Schkopau, Germany, earlier this year. Their intention is to further develop and implement Rittec’s RevolPET process into Equipoly- mers’ PET manufacturing plant. The companies plan to use materials unsuitable for mechanical recycling processes, including multilayer packag- ing and heavily coloured containers. Lab-scale polymerisation tests have shown
promising results. “The replacement of virgin monomers is within feasible reach for us,” says development manager Olaf Hempel from Equi- polymers. The RevolPET process yields terephthalic acid (TA) and ethylene glycol (MEG). The technology was developed as part of a
research and development project supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), in cooperation with the Institute for Chemical and Thermal Process Engineering (ICTV)
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
at Braunschweig Technical University. It is based on a solid-solid reaction in a standard extruder. “The exceptional aspect is the concept of direct
use of the reaction energy released,” says Rittec. “In turn, this speeds up the subsequent reactions. The self-supporting system delivers process times of less than one minute. In this time, over 95% of the PET polymers present are broken down.” The process is also highly tolerant of contaminants.
Molecular recycling In September, Koch Technology Solutions (KTS) and Ioniqa Technologies announced a partner- ship to scale up and commercialise Ioniqa’s PET recycling technology. As part of this collaboration, KTS has committed to invest up to €30m in Ioniqa, which is a spinoff from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. The Ioniqa depoly- merisation process can convert low-grade post- consumer PET using glycolysis into BHT (bis-2 hydroxy-ethyl-terephthalate) monomer. It has already been demonstrated in a 10,000 tonnes/ year production facility, which supplies Indorama. Tonnis Hooghoudt, CEO and founder of Ioniqa, says the partnership with KTS is “a major stepping stone for Ioniqa in commercialising its technology on a global level. Our expertise in [waste depoly- merisation] matches seamlessly with KTS’ track record in designing and licensing PET production processes worldwide.” Also in September, Interzero and Eastman announced a long-term supply agreement for Eastman’s planned recycling facility in Normandy, France, which will use methanolysis. Interzero will provide up to 20,000 tonnes/year of hard-to-recy- cle PET household packaging waste that the partners say would otherwise be incinerated. Interzero Plastics Recycling, part of Interzero, has the largest plastics sorting capacity in Europe. Eastman says its facility “will become the world’s
largest material-to-material molecular recycling plant”. Once complete, the facility will recycle approximately 160,000 tonnes/year of polyester waste. The project is expected to be operational in 2025. It will process coloured and opaque PET waste that cannot be recycled mechanically.
CLICK ON THE LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION: �
www.carbios.com �
www.equipolymers.com �
www.rittec.eu �
www.kochtechsolutions.com �
https://ioniqa.com �
www.interzero.de �
www.eastman.com
November/December 2022 | PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD 29
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