DEMETO approach for PET depolymerization comes with several advantages such as i) complete recycling of chemicals leading to the elimination of chemicals consumption for PET and to the enhancement of the sustainability, ii) possibility to be applied to several plastics (e.g. nylon), iii) impressively short depolymerization time (only 10 min) with under 2 kWh/kg of energy consumption, iv) overall decrease of PET monomers cost, v) lower carbon footprint and vi) closed loop/self-contained process.
As part of the efforts of an international consortium (https://www.demeto.eu/ ) to realize a chemical recycling plant (comprising of a core de-polymerization unit and a downstream treatment unit), DTU Chemical Engineering focuses on the downstream units for the recovery and purification of final products, that is ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid as virgin-grade PET monomers.
The main project objectives are the experimental determination of physical properties, building of thermodynamic models able to predict these properties, combining thermodynamic models with process simulation tools (such as ASPEN) in order to design the downstream processes, validating the developed models against lab scale and pilot plant experiments, optimizing processes through process simulation and techno-economic analysis and finally, developing the whole closed process cycle and proposing alternatives.
Head of project: Ioannis Skiadas