Nylon recycling technology plans pilot at Michelin site
Thanks to a collaboration with Michelin’s innovation & sustainability centre, French recycling tech start-up Syntetica will be setting up a pilot line at the tyre maker’s Cataroux site in Clermont-Ferrand.
The Paris-based start-up claims that its depolymerisation process operates at low temperatures and can take in nylon-rich textile and apparel waste with minimal sorting. The technology is said to yield nylon 6 and 6.6 suitable for textile and automotive applications. Syntetica expects to be able to recycle “several tonnes” of textile waste in an initial phase, with the hope of setting up a demonstrator line in 2027.
That is where the two partners will test the chemical recycling of nylon 6 and 6.6 that it is developing and will benefit from Michelin’s Centre for Sustainable Materials.
This is not the first time that Michelin supports innovative recycling technologies as it was also an early supporter of Carbios, which had installed a demonstration line at the Cataroux site in 2021. Carbios has patented an enzyme-based depolymerisation process for polyester and PET. Its first industrial scale plant is in construction in Longlaville, in the northeast of France.
Image courtesy of Syntetica
