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The growing amount of plastic waste endangers the environment. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is among the most widespread plastics due to its extensive use in fibers and packaging. Recently, chemical recycling and upcycling approaches have been proposed to produce valuable products from bale PET feedstocks. This work performs techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental and economic performances of various technologies, including electrification via microwaves over a heterogeneous catalyst. We demonstrate that using a microwave-assisted heterogeneous glycolysis process to produce bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET) could have lower production costs and emissions than the traditional dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) route due to the high reactivity and excellent reusability of the catalyst. The fast reaction rate and high selectivity render this process ideal for handling spatially distributed PET waste effectively.
Luo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.