The 40 Hottest Technologies of 2018 – as voting gets underway, the nominees in depth

Engineering Plastics Biodegradation

What does it do, how does it work, who is it aimed at?

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the most abundant synthetic plastics in use, but its recycling is not cost effective due to the mechanical recycling strategies employed today which essentially are  downcycling.  Recently, researchers on an international team led by NREL and the University of Portsmouth engineered an enzyme for PET biodegradation that is able to convert PET into its constituent building blocks, which ultimately will lead to a bio-based process for PET recycling. The team is currently developing and scaling up an enzymatic process to convert PET into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol. In addition, the team discovered that the same enzyme can also degrade polyethylene furandicarboxylate, or PEF, a bio-based substitute for PET plastics that is being hailed as a replacement for glass beer bottles, which also contribute to the pollution problem.

Competitively, what gives this technology an edge?

The discovery of an improved PET-degrading enzyme suggests that there is much more room to further improve PET and PEF-degrading enzymes, moving researchers closer to developing a bio-based process to recycle the millions of tons of discarded polyester-based plastics that take centuries to biodegrade. Similar to cellulose degradation by cellulases, commercial PET and PEF biodegradation will require a large, international research and development community to accelerate this emerging concept towards a cost-effective process, but the foundational studies are emerging now. If the R&D community is able to leverage the extensive work and investments in cellulases towards PET enzymatic breakdown, then terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol can be recycled back into high-value, virgin PET or up-cycled into higher-value, longer-lifetime materials than single-use beverage bottles or carpet-the two main uses of PET today.

What stage of development is this technology at right now?

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