Engineers Plan World-First PET Recycling

TCE Today

Dutch chemical firm Ioniqa Technologies is scaling up its process to recycle coloured PET, closing the loop on a resource that until now is largely consigned to incinerators.

PET – or polyethylene terephthalate – is mainly used in packaging for food and drinks as well as textiles. Colourless PET, used for example in clear Coca-Cola drinks bottles, is already fully recyclable but not the coloured PET that makes up the majority of the 50m t produced each year.

That is set to change with Ioniqa Technologies planning to build a demonstration plant capable of recycling 10,000 t/y of coloured PET, set to become fully operational in the Netherlands in 2017. The company plans to sell licences for its technology to chemical companies.

Continue reading at TCE Today