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

新型合成生物学和工程学对纺织工业向循环生物经济的过渡做出了重要贡献，纺织工业目前是世界上第四大污染工业（占碳排放量的10%），本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观念，即无法承受的降低回收的尝试（例如，将旧衣服变成绝缘材料），并实现革命性的循环模式，超越化石衍生原材料的使用，并允许从不可食用的生物质中创造聚酯纺织纤维（全球最主要的人造纤维），特别是用过的咖啡渣形式的咖啡废物。咖啡废物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，以及咖啡行业的扩张，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特性来开发新的生物基聚酯纤维，这些纤维可以在使用寿命结束时被整合、降解和升级回收，成为新型功能材料（例如环保口罩、抗菌涂层和受控药物输送装置），以实现未来的循环纺织品制造。微生物生物精炼厂、综合纤维纺丝和分子升级回收方面的新协同研究，将为将非食用生物质（咖啡废料）转化为功能性（染色）聚酯纤维的合成生物学途径带来突破。这将能够满足多个工业部门的要求，并打破纺织业对不可回收合成纤维的过度依赖，促进建立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.