Project Summary
Sustainable Sailing aims to tackle the disposal of 1000 tonnes of end-of-life sails, which cannot be accommodated by current upcycling processes, leading to landfill waste. The project will recycle Dacron and Mylar sails, representing 89% of sails produced, using engineering, industrial biotech, and green chemistry. Through collaboration with B&M Longworth, Farapack Polymers, and the University of Edinburgh, Sustainable Sailing will demonstrate that recycled sails can produce new sails or high-value compounds using waste feedstock, reducing landfill waste and decreasing dependence on finite, crude oil-based chemistry.
Project Achievements
This study sourced two end of life (EoL) sails and incorporated them into the DeeCom process. Both of these sails were processed through DeeCom and the recyclates from the process were purified from the aqueous phase, for downstream identification, quantification and utilisation. All DeeCom activities were undertaken in collaboration with B&M Longworth, the inventors of this innovative process. Life cycle assessments indicates that, assuming linear scaling, DeeCom was an appropriate recycling process, with a lower carbon footprint than landfill for sails. The aqueous phase recyclates were identified as primarily terephthalic acid (TPA), through a range of analytical techniques undertaken by Farapack Polymers and the Sadler Lab in the University of Edinburgh. This TPA was reincorporated into a chemical resynthesis pathway to produce BHET, the precursor of PET. Alongside this, because recycle PET is still relatively low value, the recovered recyclates were utilised as a feedstock for an engineered strain of E.coli. This strain had directly comparable growth upon the sail recyclate as reagent grade TPA, with high transformation efficiency of TPA to vanillin (79%). Techno-economic assessment of vanillin synthesis, form this source, indicated that, this step would dramatically reduce the costs of sail recycling. T f t v p f s a
Conclusions
This project successfully demonstrates that there is a clear end of life pathway for PET derived sails, through DeeCom. In addition, there are clear pathways to commercialisation, through the resynthesis of PET or, the bio-synthesis of vanillin. Preliminary life cycle assessments indicate that DeeCom as a batch process operating at the 20-sail scale, is a lower carbon footprint alternative for sail disposal than landfill, while producing PET monomers. If this can be successfully scaled up, these technologies could have the potential to be appropriate, low carbon, end of life solutions, for sails.
Next Steps
A range of activities now need to be undertaken to move these technologies form the individual sail level, to address the global challenge of sail waste (approximately 2000 tonnes). Specifically, demonstration projects are now being planned and designed to operate DeeCom at the scale necessary to process at least one tonne annually, to recycle sails. This is alongside effort to begin commercialising this as a recycling service, through stakeholder groups that we have approached and been approached by throughout this project. Currently the pathway to commercialisation requires some important process innovations, which are now part of ongoing development projects. We are therefore aiming to utilise grant funding, through projects such as the clean maritime demonstration competition, to reach this multiple tonne scale, while simultaneously planning our first fund raise through the sale of equity. None of these aims would have been within our consideration without the TRIG program funding, which has successfully transformed our value proposition to investors and other grant funding bodies. We hope to have recycled at least one tonne of sails by the end of 2024.
