Bioholistic

Developing integrated bioprocesses for a holistic chemical recycling of plastics.

Project team: Leonidas Matsakas (project leader), Io Antonopoulou, Paul Christakopoulos, Alok Kumar Patel, Kalliopi Elli Pavlopoulou, Ulrika Rova, Omprakash Sarkar

Partners: Theo Tervoort, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich; Silas Villas-Boas, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology

Duration: 2023-2025

Funded by Formas

Bioholistic aims to develop an integrated and sustainable process for valorising plastic wastes by coupling mild thermochemical and microbial/enzymatic processes for the recovery and subsequent reuse of polymeric monomers with the production of high-value microbial metabolites with niche applications. As a strategy, we are developing an alkaline peroxide organosolv process for treating post-consumer waste plastics consisting of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyolefins (PO) (e.g., bottles, trays, and films) which will enable: i) the separation of PET from PO for individual downstream processing, ii) hydrolysis of PET to terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG), and iii) partial oxidation of PO for subsequent biodegradation. Microbial cells and enzymes will be used to depolymerise PO into monomers and oligomers to valorise the PO stream. The hydrolysed PET stream will be valorised by recovering TPA for use as feedstock for virgin plastic production (chemical recycling), and EG for conversion to high-added value products (e.g., omega-3 fatty acids, squalene) with salt-tolerant microorganisms.