Closed loop manufacture of bio-based polyester fibres for a circular bioeconomy

新型合成生物学和工程对纺织业向循环生物经济的过渡做出了重要贡献，纺织业目前是世界上第四大污染行业（占碳排放量的10%），该项目旨在证明这一点。我们的愿景是打破目前纺织品回收的思维模式，（例如，将旧衣服变成绝缘材料），并实现革命性的循环模式，这将超越化石衍生原材料的使用，并允许创造聚酯纺织纤维（全球最主要的人造纤维）来自非食用生物质，具体而言，以用过的咖啡渣形式的咖啡废料咖啡废料是一种不可食用的生物质，由于其有价值的有机成分、缺乏有效的回收方法以及咖啡工业的扩张，英国是欧洲最大的咖啡消费市场之一。这项研究将利用咖啡废料的这些吸引人的属性来开发新的生物基聚酯纤维，在使用寿命结束时，这些材料会被降解并升级循环为新形式的功能性材料（例如，环保口罩、抗菌涂层和受控药物输送装置），以实现未来的圆形纺织品制造。关于微生物生物精炼、综合纤维纺丝和分子升级循环的新协同研究将使非食用生物质（咖啡废料）道德转化为功能性（染色）聚酯纤维的合成生物学路线取得突破。这将能够满足多个工业部门的要求，并打破纺织行业对不可回收合成纤维的过度依赖，促进创造真正的循环和可持续的聚酯经济。

Novel synthetic biology and engineering have an essential contribution to offer to the transition towards a circular bioeconomy for the textile industry, currently the fourth most polluting industry in the world (10% of carbon emissions), and this project intends to demonstrate this. Our vision is to disrupt the current textile recycling mindset of unaffordable downcycling attempts (e.g. turning used clothing into insulation materials) and enable revolutionary circular modalities that will transcend the use of fossil-derived raw materials and allow the creation of polyester textile fibres (the most dominant man-made fibre globally) from non-edible biomass, specifically, coffee waste in the form of used coffee grounds.Coffee waste is a non-edible biomass of emerging importance due to its valuable organic composition, the lack of efficient recycling methods, and the coffee industry expansion, with the UK ranking among the largest coffee-consuming markets in Europe.This research will exploit these appealing attributes of coffee waste to develop new bio-based polyester fibres that can be integrated, degraded and upcycled at the end of life into new forms of functional materials (e.g. environment-friendly face masks, antimicrobial coatings and controlled drug delivery devices) to enable future, circular textile manufacture. New synergistic research on microbial biorefineries, integrated fibre spinning, and molecular upcycling will enable breakthrough synthetic biology routes for the ethical transformation of non-edible biomass (coffee waste) into functional (dyed) polyester fibres. This will enable to meet the requirements of multiple industrial sectors and disrupt the textile industry overreliance on non-recyclable synthetic fibres, facilitating the creation of a truly circular and sustainable polyester economy.