Chemical Engineering March 2019 - 15

in chemical recycling processes, including
several technologies that
have recently been, or are soon to
be, scaled up.
PET upcycling
A sizeable amount of activity in the
recycling field surrounds polyethylene
terephthalate (PET), a widely
used polyester that appears in many
packaging
and
clothing
applications,
among others. Among the
major commodity plastics, PET has
the highest recycle rates (near 30%),
although much of the PET waste
that is recycled goes into lowervalue
materials.
" Some
effective
recycling
processes
exist for PET, but they require
uniform streams of material,
and generally result in products that
are not likely to be recycled themselves, "
says Gihan Hewage, Lux
Research Inc. (Boston, Mass.; www.
luxresearchinc.com) analyst and
co-author of a forthcoming report
on waste products, entitled " Waste
Conversion Innovations to Enable a
Circular Economy. " " There are now
a number of companies developing
technology for PET waste that allows
a more circular path for PET, and that
can result in products from recycled
PET waste that are indistinguishable
from petroleum-derived PET. "
Among this group of companies is
Loop Industries (Montreal, Canada;
www.loopindustries.com). Loop has
developed a technology that uses a
catalytic process to convert low- or
no-value waste PET and polyester
fiber (plastic bottles and packaging,
carpet and polyester textile of any
color, transparency or condition and
even ocean plastics that have been
degraded by the sun and salt) into
virgin-quality monoethylene glycol
(MEG) and dimethyl
terephthalate
(DMT) for the manufacture of virgingrade
Loop-branded PET resin and
polyester fiber.
In Loop's process, waste PET,
which the company refers to as
" feedstock, " is introduced into a
vessel at ambient temperature and
pressure along with Loop's proprietary
and patented catalyst and a
carrier agent. The catalyst selects
only the bonds between the polyester
monomers, so it depolymerizes
PET only, and leaves other plastics,
such as polypropylene (PP) and
high-density polyethylene (HDPE) intact,
explains Nelson Switzer, Loop's
chief growth officer. This means that
Loop's technology can use lowvalue
mixed streams of plastic and
still yield virgin quality monomers.
Because of this, the monomers can
be separated easily from the process
to produce food-grade quality
Loop-branded PET. " Essentially,
Loop's monomers become a dropin
substitute for petroleum-derived
monomers, " Switzer says.
Loop has established an industrialscale
pilot plant near Montreal, and
is currently developing a full-scale
commercial plant through a 50/50
joint venture with Indorama Ventures.
Loop and Indorama are retrofitting an
existing Indorama plant with the Loop
technology to make Loop-branded
PET resin. The commercial plant is
expected to be operational in 2020.
Loop also has an alliance with thyssenkrupp
Indusrial Solutions to integrate
the companies' technologies.
Switzer points out that there are
many advantages of Loop's technology
compared to
conventional
and mechanically recycled PET processes:
notably the vast number of
sources of PET and polyester fiber
waste from up and down the PET
value chain that can be used to produce
Loop-branded PET. " We can
use no-value or low-value PET waste
that no one else wants, " he says.
While the company won't comment
on costs, it says customers have
agreed to its pricing.
Meanwhile, Carbios (ClermontLimagne,
France; www.carbios.fr)
is taking a biological approach to
depolymerizing PET. The company
has developed a " biorecycling, " process,
where waste PET bottles and
fibers are crushed and ground to
powder, then placed in a bioreactor
and heated to 65˚C at atmospheric
pressure. Specially bioengineered
enzymes are added to de-polymerize,
in less than 16 hours, the PET
into monomers, MEG and PTA (purified
terephthalic acid). Carbios has
developed a proprietary filtration
and purification process to generate
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Chemical Engineering March 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering March 2019
