SelecTex: Selective Enzymatic Deconstruction of Polyester Fractions in Mixed Textile Waste

Work packages:

• Characterization of mixed textile waste streams (polyester/cotton, polyester/nylon, polyester/elastane blends). Compositional mapping and recalcitrance profiling

• Enzyme screening and optimization for selective polyester degradation in blended matrices. Computational and experimental approaches to improve selectivity

• Microbial approaches for selective deconstruction. Validation under simulated mixed textile waste conditions

• Engineering of TPA catabolism routes toward muconic acid and adipic acid as value-added outputs

• Fermentation and product recovery at lab scale

• LCA and TEA. Comparison against mechanical and chemical textile recycling benchmarks

Our previous work:

• In-house expertise in polyester and PET deconstruction

• Molecular docking and enzyme-substrate interaction modeling (https://doi.org/10.1186/s12934-016-0566-8
  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193503
  10.1371/journal.pone.0233467
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2012.12.008

• In-house expertise in aromatic catabolism including benzoate degradation and muconic acid production

• Adipic acid biosynthesis (https://doi.org/10.1186/s12934-021-01647-7 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2018.10.012)

• Metabolic engineering (https://doi.org/10.1186/s12934-016-0566-8, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymben.2017.06.010)

TRL: 3 → 5