Renewable PET at the next stage

Gevo, the commercial producer of bio-isobutanol, has opened a demonstration-scale paraxylene plant in Silsbee, Texas, adjacent to its existing jet fuel plant, establishing the site as a biorefinery to serve both the renewable chemicals and true drop-in biofuels markets.

Gevo is working with Coca-Cola to deliver a new production technology for renewable paraxylene – the key building block for producing fully renewable PET. Research and development support has been provided by Coca Cola and Gevo is also working with Toray Industries to develop the renewable paraxylene for packaging films and fibres used in textiles and nonwovens.

Funding assistance for the construction of the paraxylene plant was provided by Toray following the successful production of fully renewable and recyclable PET fibres and films from isobutanol at laboratory scale in 2011. Toray has also signed an offtake agreement for paraxylene produced at the Silsbee facility.

“We believe we have an elegant, viable route to fully-renewable, non-petroleum derived PET with the potential to make the world a better place,” said Patrick Gruber, Gevo’s chief executive officer.

“While the technology to make bio-based materials in a lab has been available for many years, we believe Gevo possesses technologies that have high potential to create it on a global commercial level within the next few years,” added Scott Vitters, general manager of Coca Cola’s PlantBottle Packaging Innovation Platform. “The opening of this facility is an important milestone toward our vision of creating all of our PET plastic packaging from responsibly-sourced plant materials.”

The majority of the world’s PET production is for synthetic fibres (in excess of 60%), with bottle production accounting for around 30 percent of global demand. Gevo's paraxylene, once converted to bio-based PET, has high potential for any commercial application currently served by petroleum-derived PET.

“PET is one of the major polymer products for Toray and the completion of this demonstration-scale facility by Gevo is a significant step in evaluating the business potential for fully renewable PET,” said Yukichi Deguchi of Toray.