Invention: Plant-based plastic bottles
Thanks to the invention of a savvy Dutch chemist named Gert-Jan Gruter, the environmental impact of plastic bottles may soon be significantly reduced. For years, bottles and other plastic food and beverage containers have been made from a petroleum-based polyester known as PET (polyethylene terephthalate). But Gruter's invention has given us a viable, environmentally-friendly alternative that is poised to shake up the industry.
Gruter's invention is
a new process for converting plant-based sugars into a chemical building block
known as furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). Overcoming a problem that had baffled
chemists for nearly a century and a half, Gruter managed to synthesise large
amounts of FDCA, enabling him to refine it into a new, superior polyester known
as PEF (polyethylene furanoate). PEF has many of the same traits as
conventional PET: it is robust, malleable and recyclable; yet it requires about
70% less energy to make. Plus, it's made from plants, not petroleum.
In his position as Chief Technology Officer at Avantium, Gruter achieved his
breakthrough by trying a different approach to synthesising FDCA. Rather than
attempting to create a molecule called HMF in water and then oxidise it into
FDCA, which was what numerous scientists before him had done, Gruter used a
solution of methanol alcohol and made an entirely different - and far more
stable - molecule called MMF. This proved easy to distil, extract, purify and
ultimately oxidise into large quantities of FDCA.
Societal benefit
The environmental benefits of PEF are
undeniable. Its non-reliance on petroleum-based products eliminates any potential
hazards tied to the extraction of its raw materials. (The same cannot be said of
PET, which requires petrochemicals made from oil and natural gas.) Like PET,
PEF can be completely recycled; however, unlike other polymers, PEF, in small
amounts, can be recycled together with PET, without interfering with the
process. For a new product, this is of immense value - it means PEF can
effectively piggyback on PET's widespread recycling stream.
A plant-based polymer, PEF offers a number of other advantages over its
petroleum-derived counterpart as well. It has greater material integrity, which
means less material is required to make the same-sized plastic bottle. This saves
not only on manufacturing costs, but also on energy required to produce bottles
- a boon for both companies and consumers. As if that weren't enough, PEF is
also more resistant and has demonstrated better barrier properties than PET.
This means gases like CO2 and oxygen are kept away from a product -
or in the case of soft drinks, kept inside the product - resulting in longer
shelf life for food and beverages.
Economic benefit
The global market for PET plastic packaging is currently worth about EUR 54 billion (USD 57 billion), of which plastic bottles account for roughly EUR 32-37 billion. By 2021, it is forecast to jump to EUR 70 billion. To capitalise on this growth, Avantium has been working with its partners to scale up its production of PEF. In March 2016, it formed thejoint venture Synvina with German chemical company BASF SE to bring PEF bottles to market by 2021. To that end, an industrial-scale plant will be constructed in Antwerp, with an annual production capacity of up to 50 000 tonnes.
Avantium is also co-operating with companies including Coca-Cola and Danone. Avantium was founded in 2000 as a research services firm by a consortium of companies led by Royal Dutch Shell, but it has since grown into a technology company that recently raised EUR 103 million in a successful initial public offering, giving it a market capitalisation of EUR 264 million.
