Forward-looking project by the University of Kassel and the University of HamburgNewly approved project „BioLoop" – Micro-biologically enhanced material cycle for closing PE and PE-PET multilayer plastic foil LoopsMicrobial recycling – a solution for multilayer plastic packaging?

20 January 2025

Photo: Pixabay

The focus of the four-year, 1.2 million Euro VolkswagenStiftung-funded project “BioLoop: Micro-biologically enhanced material cycle for closing PE and PE-PET multilayer plastic foil Loops” is focused on enzymatic or microbial recycling. The aim is to develop a new and ecologically optimal class of recycling processes for polyethylene (PE) films and PE-polyethylene terephthalate (PET) multilayer films, which leads to high-quality PE and PET products via the enzymatic depolymerization of PE or PET and subsequent reactive extrusion of short-chain building blocks (oligomers). Prof. Dr. David Laner, Department of Waste Technology and Resource Management, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans-Peter Heim, Department of Plastics Technology (both University of Kassel) and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Streit, Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology (University of Hamburg) are involved in the project as partners.

Although this project is risky due to the completely new approach, it could pave the way for the recycling of multilayer plastic films with a focus on microbial degradation and help to achieve the recycling targets set by the European Commission.

The results of the project could be interesting not only for the food sector, but also for the automotive or textile sector. The wide variety of plastics used in cars, the dominance of black plastics and the diversity of fillers pose a major challenge for conventional mechanical recycling processes and could make enzymatic recycling very attractive. The same applies to textiles, for which the variety of materials makes fiber-to-fiber recycling with established technologies more difficult.

Thematically, the project also ties in with the scientific activities of the research cluster “BiTWerk - Biological Transformation of Technical Materials” headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing Thomas Niendorf and Prof. Dr.-Ing Hans-Peter Heim.