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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DEMETO (Modular, scalable and high-performance DE-polymerization by MicrowavE TechnolOgy)

Teaser

Summary

Nowadays, Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)-based waste streams are mainly treated by means of mechanical processes, aimed at recovering plastic solid waste (PSW) for re-use; because of the degradation and heterogeneity of PSW, only single-polymer plastics can be processed, thus excluding all the more complex and contaminated waste. Quality is the main issue when dealing with mechanically recycled products, which, in the end, could just be burned or land field disposed.
Chemical processing could be considered, instead, for complete recovering of the molecules constituting the polymer (which would be then ready to be used to produce virgin PET) but, up until now, de-polymerization approaches have not been widely adopted within industrial practice due to their inability of working continuously, their very high reaction times and, in the end, inability to achieve economic return of investment.
The value chain of PET is quite complex, and involves several steps that already links in cross-sectorial interactions multiple companies across the European and worldwide market. It is at the end of that life cycle that DEMETO proposes its innovative technology: the first feasible and sustainable (economically, environmentally and socially) industrial application of chemical treatment for reuse of PET/Polyester waste streams. Thanks to a process intensifying approach based on innovative usage of microwave radiations, DEMETOâ€™s recycling technology will provide an indefinite life to PET, allowing to come back to its composing elements (Ethylene Glycol, EG, and Terephtalic Acid, PTA) without degrading the materials and, consequently, paving the way for a disruptive, large-scale circular economy for plastic products.

Work performed

DEMETO proposes a highly innovative approach to the Process Intensification of the chemical recycling reaction (de-polymerization) of PET plastic waste, based on the adoption of microwave radiations as energetic catalyser, to reduce reaction time and the complexity of the purification steps of PTA, while increasing productivity through a continuous process (instead of the batch ones typical of the industrial state-of-the-art).
Already patented at international level and validated at different TRLs, the major strength of DEMETOâ€™s core concept is the adoption of a full process approach that, embedding at its heart the process intensifying MW-based reaction, then proposes a completely self-contained post-processing unit whose outputs, apart from the virgin-grade EG and PTA raw materials, will generate directly feedstock for the overall de-polymerization process.
Implemented in the pilot plant that DEMETO will realize, this overall concept is what guarantees the high flexibility and huge productivity-to-size ratios that the project will achieve at demonstration stage.
Taking into account the project overall goals, in order to guarantee the objectives achievement and to efficiently and effectively manage it, a coherent work-plan over 36 months has been devised.
DEMETO work-plan is therefore organized through 9 work-packages (WPs): WP1 is dedicated to project management, WP9 to exploitation and dissemination, while WPs from 2 to 8 implements the project technological advancements, with WP7 dedicated to the realization of the pilot plant and WP8 specifically devoted to the demonstration of the project approach effectiveness.

Final results

Strategically speaking, the business deployment and exploitation approach that we have conceived for our de-polymerization technology will start by focusing on Europe, which currently absorbs 15% of the global production of plastic. The reason for this choice is due to the proximity of the market but, most of all, to the fact that Europe has one of the highest recycling rate in the world, recovering about 54-57% of post-consumer plastic (the global average is slightly above 40%). This means that, even considering only the treatment of coloured baled battles, the available market size for DEMETOâ€™s technology would correspond to more than 60 plants in Europe.
Now, these figures are already quite impressive, but the real potential for disruptively changing the market is elsewhere: the synthetic fibres domain! Almost 70% of the annual production of virgin PET is absorbed by the textile value chain, for a total annual consumption of polyester around 40 Mt (see section 2.1.1 for further details). The current issue here is that, since there exists no way to recycle PET from post-consumer textile waste, nobody has ever invested in a recovery value chain and, therefore, all of that amount is currently destined to landfill disposal and/or incineration.
Doing specific math on this second scenario is clearly impossible at this stage because too many elements are missing, but DEMETO will dedicate a specific effort to deepen the understanding of this situation (see work-plan in section 3) and also our exploitation strategy is already considering these two â€œwavesâ€ of commercial deployment.