Project description
Converting plastic waste into biodegradable chemicals
The escalating threat of plastic pollution arises from the excessive use of plastic products and their release into the environment. Polyethylene (PE) stands out as the most commonly employed plastic, yet its non-degradable nature results in either incineration or disposal in landfills (constituting 67 %). Merely 12 % of plastic waste undergoes recycling, with less than 1 % achieving transformation into high-quality products. In this context, the EU-funded ACTPAC project introduces a comprehensive, industry-viable method for converting PE into alkanes, high-value chemicals, and fully biodegradable polyesters. This initiative aims to establish systems to transform alkanes into monomers, facilitating the production of eco-friendly polyesters for diverse applications. By doing so, the project contributes zero-waste solutions to the management of plastic waste.
Objective
Plastic pollution has become a clear threat to many environmental niches and ecosystems, due to rapidly increasing use of plastic products and leakage to the environment. Polyethylene (PE) is the most widely used and the largest-volume plastic (c.a. 30% of total plastics). Due to the absence of reactive groups, the C-C backboned plastics are often categorized as non-degradable; generally disposed by incineration or landfill (67%). About 12% plastic wastes are recycled as the goods with inferior quality and performance. The real catalytic route for upcycling of PE wastes into value-added products is <1%. It is clear that there is an urgent need to develop new routes for innovative upcycling of plastic wastes towards a paradigm shift in the plastic economy.
ACTPAC proposes a complete value-added industry-viable path to convert PE firstly into alkanes; then into high-value chemicals (monomers); and finally into PE-like but fully biodegradable polyesters. Beyond the state-of-the art technologies, ACTPAC will design and deploy new catalysts and cross-metathesis modes for highly active and selective metathesis of PE into linear alkanes with a narrow distribution range (C6-C18, >90%). Two separate systems: multi-enzyme machinery assembled in the recombinant cells, and metabolic engineered yeast system, dedicated to the transformation of alkanes into monomers will be developed. Monomers of diversified chain-lengths will be used for the synthesis of polyesters presenting different properties and polymer performances, assignable for various applications. A zero-waste solution to the plastic waste management is thus created to keep them out of the environment, and reclaim their values. The new properties and specific applications of the new polyester plastics produced from upcycling of PE waste will bring up the SMEs with new business opportunities by scalable, flexible and robust multi-product manufacturing processes for on-demand and small-volume output production.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinator
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark