A New Circular Economy Concept for Textiles and Chemicals

The RESYNTEX conference in Brussels on 24 April 2019 marked the final phase of this exciting project. RESYNTEX was funded by the European Commission’s HORIZON 2020 Programme via a SPIRE Public Private Partnership call and started in June 2015 to create a new circular economy concept for the textile and chemical industries. Cefic is one of 20 partners involved in the project, which represented 10 different EU member states.

Major technological advances were achieved, one being the construction of a pilot installation in Slovenia. This site will demonstrate the whole symbiosis concept of RESYNTEX in an industrial environment with full integration of the sorting, pre-treatment, chemical and enzymatic processes, as well as liquid and solid waste treatment and water recycling.

With this installation, the RESYNTEX project moved into the real-world testing of its technology for chemical and biotechnological recycling of textile waste. To achieve large-scale industrial application, significant further technology development work is necessary and must be accompanied by smart regulatory and economic incentives.

 

The project may be coming to an end, but the project partners see plenty of opportunities to work towards a circular and low carbon economy with a key role for innovative chemical and biotechnological recycling technologies. Although fundamentally understood, such technologies are currently under-deployed for plastics circularity.  Further innovation, scale-up to demonstration, adoption of policies, and establishment of recycling-chains are needed to establish clear pathways for full-scale implementation to valorise post-use waste currently shipped, burnt or disposed of in landfill.

More information at www.resyntex.eu.

Bio Base Europe celebrates 5 years as a Bioeconomy Pioneer!

On Tuesday 16 June the SusChem-inspired Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant will celebrate five years of operation in Ghent, Belgium. And it will also start to prepare for the next stage in its evolution with a ceremony to inaugurate new 15 000 Litre bioreactors tanks.

The Bio Base Europe celebration will start at 14:00 on Tuesday 16 June at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Ghent. For more information on the celebration visit the dedicated website.

Over 350 bioeconomy professionals already decided to join the celebration. The event is free but prior registration is mandatory and the registration deadline in 9 June. Don’t miss the bioeconomy networking event of the year!

Bio Base Europe
Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant is a pilot plant for biobased products and processes. The construction of the plant started in 2008 and by the end of 2010, the first projects were running. In those five years Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant became a European frontrunner with regard to the development of the biobased economy in Europe.

Bio Base Europe is a flexible and diversified pilot plant for developing, scaling-up and the trial production of biobased products and processes. Its aim is to bridge the gap between scientific development and the industrial production of new, innovative, biobased products. It provides the scaling-up step needed to continue the development of innovations that appear to be promising at laboratory scale up to industrial scale. The Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant helps companies from across the globe to scale-up their biobased processes and to industrialise them. The Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant is an independent, open, innovation centre for the biobased economy.

Biofuel from barley
The pilot plant recently hit the headlines when it helped partner Celtic Renewables to produce the first biofuel derived from waste products from Scotch Whisky production.

The biobutanol biofuel is produced from draff - kernels of barley which are soaked in water to facilitate the fermentation process in whisky production - and pot ale, the yeasty liquid that is left over following distillation.