21 Apr 2020 --- New research has established an improved hydrolase that can break down a minimum of 90 percent PET into monomers within just ten hours, with a productivity of 16.7 grams of terephthalate per liter per hour. The Toulouse Biotechnology Institute, France, researchers also demonstrated that biologically recycled PET – exhibiting the same properties as petrochemical PET – can be produced from enzymatically depolymerized PET waste before being processed into bottles. Carbios, a company trying to use the enzymes in industrial-scale recycling to produce food-grade plastics, made the discovery and is currently running this technology at the pilot stage.
