Maurizio Crippa

GR3N SA is a Swiss company founded in 2011 that developed an innovative process, based on the application of microwave technology to an alkaline hydrolysis, which provides an economically viable recycling process of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), allowing the industrial implementation. This new process can potentially change how PET is recycled worldwide, with huge benefits both for the recycling industry and for all the polyester value chain. In the past, many efforts were made to transfer chemical recycling from research labs to industry but the economic aspects blocked the proposed solutions. Thanks to the DEMETO (Depolymerization by MicrowavE TechnolOgy) technology developed by gr3n this approach becomes real. gr3n has a massive advantage with respect to its competitors because it can supply a chemical recycling solution (i.e., closing the PET lifecycle, offering polymer grade material, treating waste, lowering carbon footprint) providing cost savings for players in the value chain. The input materials for the process can be post-consumer and/or post-industrial polyesters, both from bottles (colored, colorless, transparent, opaque) and textile (100% polyester but also with up to 30% of other materials like PU, cotton, polyether-polyurea, etc.). The reaction output is a mixture of building block derivatives, which are then isolated and purified. Monomers can be endlessly re-polymerized to provide brand-new virgin PET or any other polymer that is using one of the monomers. As mentioned for the depolymerization step, every time we run a polymerization, we obtain a brand new polymer, where the technical features depend on the monomer purity and the polymerization conditions.