New factories for depolymerising polyester textiles are in the works. Using a variety of ‘advanced’ or molecular recycling processes, they promise to treat textile waste that cannot be mechanically recycled. In a few years, an industrial infrastructure for circular polyester could be up and running. 

Innovation and legislation are driving progress to solve a particularly tricky issue: what to do with the increasing quantities of apparel, new and used, that are discarded every year. The EU is working on directives that will make it more difficult to dispose of textile waste and that may also incentivise the integration of recycled content in new clothes. This context is fuelling funding towards companies whose technologies can recycle blended textiles, carpets, and other complex forms of PET waste. These advanced, molecular or chemical recycling techniques, which broadly mean the same thing, depolymerise, or revert polyester-based textiles back into their original building blocks, are delivering virgin-grade monomers to start a new cycle.

France is particularly active in this field. A wide-reaching reindustrialisation plan, France 2030, has attracted, and supports, ambitious plastics and textiles recycling projects. These include Carbios with Indorama Ventures, Loop Industries with Vinci, and Eastman.

Regional authorities often pitch in to these greentech ventures, as seen at French start-up Recyc’Elit. It is rumoured that others, maybe Circ, are also looking to take advantage of this favourable environment and may build their first factories in France.

But France is not alone, and chemical recycling technologies are in development across Europe. The Netherlands, where CuRe and Ioniqa are headquartered, dedicates considerable efforts to building up an industrial infrastructure for recycling. In Italy, two plastics recycling plants are in the works, at Garbo (ChemPet) and NextChem. The latter is applying a process developed by Swiss company gr3n, which is itself planning to build an industrial-scale facility, specifically for textiles, in Spain. In Switzerland, Worn Again and DePoly are seeking to scale up their depolymerising technologies for blended textiles. All told, these add up to a dozen future factories, in Europe alone. They could, depending on their level of advancement, become operational sometime between 2025 and 2027. 

With three times more polyester fibre than PET packaging produced globally, they have their work cut out for them. Polyester is the most commonly used fibre in apparel, but it is often just one component of many. While production waste could, and should, be recycled using mechanical or thermomechanical methods, post-consumer apparel is an entirely different matter. It is believed that chemical recycling is the only solution to extract raw materials of value out of their variously blended materials.

With or without a solvent 

Most chemical recycling technologies depolymerise polyester back into its original monomers using a solvent (such as methanol and glycol). They either extract monoethylene glycol (MEG) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA), or MEG and dimethyl terephthalate (DMT); both combinations can be repolymerised into new polyester filaments. But some do not use a solvent (solvolysis has come forward as another umbrella term for chemical recycling). Alternatives can be gr3n’s microwave-based method, or enzymes, as at Carbios. 

Maurizio Grippa, founder and CEO of gr3n, has been working on MADE (Microwave Assisted Depolymerisation), for 15 years. It was the focus of an EU-funded research programme, Demeto, and is the solution chosen for a NextChem plastics recycling plant in Chieti, Italy. “The technology works well on PET packaging, but we found its efficiency on textiles to be not as good,” says Mr Grippa. Feeling more concerned by the issue of apparel waste, he has spent the last two years developing a solution for textiles. The technology developed by the Lugano-based company is said to have a relatively good tolerance for non-polyester content, up to 30%, a threshold higher than that of most other methods. “We can produce a food-grade polymer from used textiles,” he insists. The technology is fast, in the order of minutes, and it is also a selective process that leaves other components intact. These are currently filtered out, but the company is working on valorising the unprocessed inputs, especially cotton. 

Last year, gr3n announced plans to build its first industrial-scale plant capable of producing 40,000 tonnes of virgin-like PET. It will be managed by a joint venture between gr3n and one of its shareholders, Intecsa Industrial, a turn-key engineering and construction company based in Madrid. Three possible locations are under consideration, with construction expected to start in late 2024 and operations in 2027. 

Using enzymes to break down polymers is seen as a promising biotech method, and French company Carbios is one of the most advanced in the field. A first commercial-scale biorecycling facility for PET packaging is in construction in Longlaville, in the east of France, adjacent to a polyester and PET production site operated by Indorama Ventures. “It will be able to process 50,000 tonnes of PET waste, which will be transformed into 45,000 tonnes of output in the form of PTA and MEG,” Carbios CEO, Emmanuel Ladent, tells WSA.

The company is now making progress in applying its technology to recycle polyester fabrics. A pilot line for post-industrial and post-consumer polyester waste has recently been set up at its headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand. The automated and patented feedstock preparation line is said to be able to treat 300kg of textiles per hour in a continuous process. It is the result of input from a research consortium launched in 2022 with sports and outdoor brands On, Patagonia, Puma, Salomon and lifestyle group PVH. “Our process produces very little waste with an overall yield of 90% at the demonstration plant scale. The small amount of waste produced is dry waste made up of anything that entered the process that is not PET, such as other plastics (polyethylene or polyamide, for example), contaminants and dyes. This represents 2% to 10% of the raw material,” says Mr Ladent. The enzyme-based technology is believed to have a low carbon footprint, as it takes place at around 70°C. But the enzymes need time, in the order of hours, to do their job. 

Low-energy processes

Chemical regeneration is often considered more energy-intensive than mechanical recycling, but companies in this field are finding ways to lessen their impact. Carbon dioxide emissions for the production of fossil fuel-based polyester are said to be around 2-2.2 CO2eq/kg. A life cycle assessment (LCA) of Eastman’s methanol-based polyester renewal technology from early 2022 found that it emitted 1.49 CO2eq/kg. Documentation dating back to 2017 indicates a score of 1.28 for gr3n’s microwave-based technology. Mr Ladent, at Carbios, says that PET producers can halve their greenhouse gas emissions using its biorecycled monomers.

The technology for recycling PET and polyester textiles developed by Dutch company CuRe is based on glycolysis, and does not completely depolymerise polyester, which gives it a low carbon footprint. “The polymer remains heated in a same loop and the process, which is continuous not batch, takes only a very limited amount of time,” says Josse Kunst, chief commercial officer. He adds that “the further a polymer is broken down, the more energy is needed. Energy is also needed to build a polymer back up.” A peer-reviewed life cycle assessment, taking into account the hydrogen and wind energy mix in the Netherlands, found that its method emitted around 0.27 CO2eq/kg for post-industrial waste and 0.42 CO2eq/kg for post-consumer waste. 

In its pilot plant, the company tests different types of feedstock, including sportswear, carpets, mattresses, nonwovens and PET packaging. It has plans for a commercial scale facility, which, depending on funding, could be operational in 2025. “Our business case is based on packaging feedstock, and we intend to use that to invest in textile recycling. The first factory will run both plastics and textiles. Then we will see how the market develops and where the feedstocks are,” says Mr Kunst. As opposed to other projects, CuRe’s process, he notes, can function well as a small unit located close to big cities where waste is generated.

French start-up Recyc’Elit claims to have developed a chemical recycling process that is gentler than other methods, using methanol as a solvent. “It is a new generation methanolysis process that operates at a moderate temperature, less than 60°C, and at atmospheric pressure,” Raouf Medimagh, co-founder and chief technology officer, tells WSA. This ‘light touch’ technology allows Recyc’Elit to retrieve the other components in post-consumer textile waste, such as cotton, nylon and elastane. “Our goal is to recycle everything, even the most complex feedstock that others would tend to refuse, and find markets for all the components,” he says. “This means that the feedstock we can use will be less expensive, which could be an advantage in the future when competition for pure polyester post-consumer clothes will be high.”

Founded in 2020, the company has recently raised €3.2 million from the city of Lyon led by venture capital firm Demeter, France 2030 and other funds. This will allow it to scale up to 10 tonnes per year by the end of 2025. Recyc’Elit’s demonstration unit will be installed in USIN, a former Bosch factory in Venissieux, near Lyon. It will have a starting capacity of 10 tonnes per year and measures 1 cubic metre in size, making it a compact solution. The recycling process delivers the two monomers DMT and MEG, and its yield is in the range of 80-85%. “Our conversion rate is 100%, as we recover nearly 100% of the polyester input,” says Mr Medimagh. Feedstock preparation is also light, as he says: “Our process has a good tolerance for hard points”. Its timeline for the future is to achieve a capacity of 100 tonnes per year in 2026-27 and a full ramp-up phase of 10,000 tonnes annually from 2028.

Swiss start-up DePoly recently raised funds to build a demonstration plant, expected to be operational in 2024, and a 50,000 tonne per year commercial facility is in the pipeline for 2027. BASF Venture and Beiersdorf contributed to a seed financing round of CHF12.3 million (€13 million). The technology developed by DePoly delivers MEG and PTA. It is said to operate at room temperature and standard pressure, with minimal pre-processing of feedstock. 

Larger scale projects

As mentioned, large-scale chemical recycling facilities for PET and polyester are in the works in France. Eastman, a US-based producer of polyester and manmade cellulosic fibres, is building a plant in Saint-Jean-de-Folleville, in the west of France, where it will apply a methanolysis method it calls Polyester Renewal Technology. It represents an investment of €850 million and is expected to have a capacity of 110,000 tonnes per year when it comes on stream in 2026. Eastman plans to focus on difficult-to-treat waste, citing coloured PET packaging and polyester carpets as feedstock. French chemicals group Suez and Canadian company Loop Industries will be setting up a factory in Saint-Avold, in the east of France, a €450 million investment and a planned capacity of 70,000 tonnes per year. Loop’s technology uses methanol as a solvent and delivers DMT, as does Eastman’s, but the company claims that it operates in low heat conditions and with “no added pressure”.

Accelerating Circularity, a non-profit whose mission is to develop textile-to-textile recycling at scale, has set up a working group for chemical processes.  Members of the Alliance of Chemical Textile Recyclers (ACTR) include Eastman, Worn Again, Circ, Gr3n, CuRe, and The Lycra Company, along with companies that regenerate cotton into manmade cellulosic fibres such as Lenzing, Renewcell, Infinited, Sodra and pulp supplier Sappi. In addition to its goal to increase the amount of textiles that are recycled, it also seeks “to inform the industry from a recycler’s point of view,” says Karla Magruder, Accelerating Circularity president and founder. The problem with polyester, she points out, is that it is primarily produced in Asia, while waste is mostly generated in the global north. “At this stage of the game, we can get enough material to the recyclers that are mostly in pilot or demo phase.”

As with all the companies surveyed, she expects the implementation of EU Green Deal directives to increase feedstock quantities. Major drivers would be the separate collection of household textile waste, with the roll-out of the European Waste Directive planned for 2025, and extended producer responsibility schemes for companies that sell clothing in Europe.

It will take time for these measures to be written into law across the bloc’s 27 members. It will also be years before the dozen or so chemical recycling facilities for textiles that are in the works begin to run. This is an exciting period for the field, says Mr Kunst, at CuRe: “It will then be possible to assess what technologies are the most mature.” But he believes that the period from 2027 to 2030 may be even more exciting. “That is when we will see which companies will be building their second and third plants.”

Swiss start-up DePoly has developed a chemical recycling process that is said to operate at room temperature and standard pressure without requiring pre-sorting, pre-washing or removal of contaminants.
CREDIT: DePoly

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