Enzymatic deconstruction of polyester textiles

如果我们要将当前的线性纺织经济转变为循环经济，减少对化石原料的依赖，就需要回收使用寿命结束的聚酯的新方法。聚酯是一种聚合物，由化学键连接在一起的结构单元链;在这种情况下，它们是酯键。天然聚合物在生命的所有王国中都是司空见惯的，对于每一种天然聚合物，都存在一种天然酶，可以将其解构为其组成的构建块。这些分解酶赋予生命以循环性;构建模块被重复使用，不会产生任何浪费。该项目将开发基于酶的技术，将废弃聚酯纺织品分解为化学构建模块，然后在循环生物经济中再利用。我们将开发强大的酶，可以解构废旧纺织品中最常用的聚酯聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯（PET），并耐受这种原料带来的挑战，即其韧性以及染料和添加剂的存在。我们的研究将确定使用酶将废弃纺织品中的PET解构为简单的构建块汤的可行性，以转化为新的聚酯，从而循环现有的线性经济，并减少从化石燃料为基础的化学品生产原始PET的需求。目前用于聚酯（主要是饮料瓶和食品包装）的酶促回收的方案依赖于能量密集型预处理方案来降低聚合物的韧性，以使其被目前性能最好的酶解构。聚酯纺织品对酶解构提出了进一步的潜在挑战，因为它们含有可能阻碍酶活性的染料和其他添加剂。最终，行业采用基于酶的技术来解构聚酯纺织品将需要对该技术进行全面评估，包括在模拟拟议工业应用的实验室规模生物反应器中进行概念验证研究。我们的项目将在三个相关工作包中解决这些挑战，每个工作包都由影响咨询小组的意见指导。我们将使用优化酶性能和绿色物理化学纺织品预处理的组合方法来克服坚韧聚酯对酶解构的抵抗力。我们将测试我们的工程酶与添加剂、染料和溶剂的相容性，以选择最适合聚酯纺织品解构的酶。我们将在实验室规模的生物反应器中将我们最强大的酶应用于适当预处理的废聚酯纺织品，以评估扩大酶解技术的潜力和局限性。在整个过程中，我们将通过BOTTLE联盟和仿生研究所的分解设计项目与全球研究界合作。我们还将通过与英国自行车服装品牌Endura的合作，努力与英国企业在纺织品价值链中的要求建立协同效应。在项目结束时，我们将与我们的项目合作伙伴和其他行业利益相关者举行研讨会，展示上述研究的结果，并为酶促聚酯纺织品的未来应用提供技术开发路线图的信息。解构主义

Novel means of recycling end-of-life polyesters are required if we are to convert the current, linear textile economy into a circular one with a reduced reliance on fossil-based feedstocks.Polyesters are a type of polymer, chains of building blocks linked together by chemical bonds; in this case, they are ester bonds. Natural polymers are commonplace in all kingdoms of life, and for every natural polymer, there exists a natural enzyme that can deconstruct it back into its constituent building blocks. These deconstructing enzymes give circularity to life; the building blocks are reused with nothing going to waste.This project will develop enzyme-based technology for the breakdown of waste polyester textiles into their chemical building blocks for subsequent reuse in a circular bioeconomy. We will develop robust enzymes that can deconstruct the most commonly-used polyester polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in waste textiles, tolerating the challenges that this feedstock poses, namely its toughness and the presence of dyes and additives. Our research will establish the feasibility of using enzymes to deconstruct the PET in waste textiles into a soup of simple building blocks for conversion back into new polyesters, thus circularising the existing linear economy, and reducing the need to produce virgin PET from fossil-fuel based chemicals. Current schemes for enzymatic recycling of polyesters - predominantly beverage bottles and food packaging - rely upon energy-intensive pre-treatment regimes to reduce the toughness of the polymer in order for it to be deconstructed by the current best-performing enzymes. Polyester textiles present further potential challenges for enzymatic deconstruction in that they contain dyes and other additives that may impede the activity of enzymes. Ultimately, industry's adoption of enzyme-based technology for deconstruction of polyester textiles will require thorough assessments of the technology, including proof-of-concept studies in laboratory-scale bioreactors that mimic the proposed industrial application.Our project will address these challenges in three related work packages, at each point guided by input from an impact advisory group. We will use a combined approach of optimising both enzyme performance and green, physicochemical textile pre-treatment to overcome the resistance of tough polyesters to enzymatic deconstruction. We will test the compatibility of our engineered enzymes with additives, dyes and solvents to select those enzymes that are best suited to polyester textile deconstruction. We will apply our most robust enzymes to appropriately pretreated waste polyester textiles in laboratory-scale bioreactors to evaluate the potential and limitations of scaling up the enzymatic deconstruction technology. Throughout, we will engage with the global research community through the BOTTLE consortium and through Biomimicry Institutes' Design for Decomposition project. We will also work to build synergy with the requirements of UK businesses in the textiles value chain through our partnership with Endura, a UK cycling clothing brand.At the end of the project, we will hold workshops with our project partners and other industrial stakeholders, to showcase the outcomes from the above study and to inform the development of a technology development roadmap for future application of enzymatic polyester textile deconstruction.