Huang P, Ahamed A, Sun R, De Hoe GX, Pitcher J, Mushing A, Lourenço F, Shaver MP. Circularizing PET-G Multimaterials: Life Cycle Assessment and Techno-Economic Analysis.
ACS Sustain Chem Eng 2023;
11:15328-15337. [PMID:
37886038 PMCID:
PMC10598876 DOI:
10.1021/acssuschemeng.3c04047]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/02/2023] [Revised: 10/01/2023] [Indexed: 10/28/2023]
Abstract
The recycling of multimaterials such as payment or access cards poses significant challenges. Building on previous experimental work demonstrating the feasibility of chemically recyclable payment cards made from glycol-modified poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET-G), we use life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis to investigate two chemical recycling scenarios and evaluate their potential environmental and economic benefits. Recovering all components from the depolymerized products (Scenario 1) achieves substantial environmental benefits across most categories, reducing global warming by up to 67% compared to only recovering major components (Scenario 2). However, the environmental benefits in Scenario 1 incur 69% higher total annualized costs, causing its profitability to be dependent on a minimum selling price of £13.4/kg for cyclohexanedimethanol and less than a 10% discount rate. In contrast, Scenario 2 is less sensitive to discount rate variation and thus a lower risk and more economically feasible option, albeit less environmentally sustainable.
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