New Project: PET-Rezya

27 October 2022, by Dr. Jennifer Chow

The PET-Rezya project addresses the overall goal of transforming today's economy into a bioeconomic circular economy. On the one hand, climate change is to be counteracted by reusing raw materials and, on the other hand, environmental pollution caused by plastic waste is to be reduced. In this project, a biological recycling process based on enzymatic decomposition is to be used and developed.

For example in the aerospace industry, it is essential to move to more circular material flows to ensure closed-loop utilization of all materials used. Technical PET polymers, which have a wide range of applications, play an important role here. PET polymers are currently used for applications in aircraft and train cabins as flame retardant PET in various textiles. Today, recycling of these materials is possible by remelting and reprocessing, but this cannot be repeated as often as required due to oxidation and degradation of the polymer during thermal treatment. In addition to this process, today the disposed PET textiles are mainly reprocessed into low-cost applications such as carpet pad after cabin refurbishment by shredding. The development of a fully repeatable circular process for flame retardant PET through enzymatic decomposition and repolymerization of the PET polymer could open up more use cases for a fully recyclable material for safety-critical transportation applications and make a large amount of textiles completely recyclable.