Abstract
Waste polyester textiles are not recycled due to separation challenges and partial structural degradation during use and recycling. Chemical recycling of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) textiles through depolymerization can provide a feedstock of recycled monomers to make “as-new” polymers. While enzymatic PET recycling is a more selective and more sustainable approach, methods in development, however, have thus far been limited to clean, high-quality PET feedstocks, and require an energy-intensive melt-amorphization step ahead of enzymatic treatment. Here we report that high-crystallinity PET in mixed PET/cotton textiles can be directly and selectively depolymerized to terephthalic acid (TPA) by using a commercial cutinase from Humicola insolens under moist-solid reaction conditions, affording up to 30 ± 2% yield of TPA. The process is readily combined with cotton depolymerization through simultaneous or sequential application of the cellulase enzymes CTec2®, providing up to 83 ± 4% yield of glucose without any negative influence on the TPA yield.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e202201613 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | ChemSusChem |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 27 Sept 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 9 Jan 2023 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- polyethylene terephthalate
- cotton
- depolymerization
- mechano-enzymatic
- liquid-assisted