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

新颖的合成生物学和工程学对纺织业向循环生物经济的过渡做出了重要贡献，纺织业目前是世界第四大污染行业(占碳排放的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思维模式，这种思维方式是无法负担得起的下行循环尝试(例如，将旧衣服变成绝缘材料)，并实现革命性的循环模式，这种模式将超越化石原料的使用，并允许从不可食用的生物质中创造出聚酯纺织纤维(全球最主要的人造纤维)，特别是以用过的咖啡渣的形式出现的咖啡废料。咖啡废料是一种正在崛起的重要的不可食用生物质，因为其宝贵的有机成分，缺乏有效的回收方法，以及咖啡业的扩张。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，这些纤维可以在生命结束时被整合、降解和升级为新形式的功能材料(例如环保口罩、抗菌涂层和受控的药物输送装置)，从而实现未来的循环纺织品制造。微生物生物精炼、集成纤维纺丝和分子升级循环方面的新协同研究将使非食用生物质(咖啡废料)在伦理上转化为功能性(染色)聚酯纤维的突破性合成生物学路线成为可能。这将能够满足多个工业部门的需求，并打破纺织行业对不可回收合成纤维的过度依赖，促进创建真正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.