With 50% of global plastic waste ending up in landfills and only 9% recycled, GR3N developed MADE, the Microwave Assisted DEpolymerisation solution. This process breaks down PET into its chemical building blocks that can be recombined to create new PET pellets with virgin-like quality for packaging and textiles, effectively closing the loop for difficult to recycle plastic. The technology is based on alkaline hydrolysis, and it can manage a higher amount of impurities compared to the existing ones.
In March 2024, GR3N successfully demonstrated MADE and the power of Schneider Electric’s open automation technology, EcoStruxure Automation Expert at its demonstration site in Italy. MADE plant is conceived to anticipate the usage of all the technologies that will be finally adopted for the first industrial-scale facility, foreseen to be installed in Spain and with an expected capacity of over 40,000 ton/year of PET waste treated. The intrinsic modularity of GR3N’s proprietary recycling process has allowed MADE to be the first plastic recycling plant to use the shared automation runtime managed by Universal Automation, based on the IEC 61499 standard.
The software-defined automation system decouples hardware from software, allowing devices and equipment to be freely connected across architecture layers, regardless of manufacturer. It acts as the digital backbone of industrial operations at the plant, providing the foundation to make more informed decisions. This approach allows MADE to be also technological demonstration of a new generation of automation systems, where the intertwining between OT and IT enables the exploitation of advanced functionalities for operations management and data analytics.
Due to EcoStruxure Automation Expert’s modular, agnostic nature, GR3N was able to choose the optimal technology for the demonstration plant and easily scale to new sites. Benefits include:
- Industrial scalability – significantly minimizes the risk of investment during the scale-up of GR3N’s technology towards the First of a Kind (FOAK) industrial plant, while offering a new way to protect its intellectual property as process licensor.
- Design flexibility – vendor and hardware-agnostic system enabled GR3N to design the best possible solution without being held back by vendor lock in or being impacted by supply chain issues.
- Engineering time and time-to-market reduction – the modular design of control software, supported by digital continuity across the whole plant lifecycle with automation-focused decision-making happening at conception, reduces human error at the development stage by 40%.
- Control simplification – Vendor-independence allows controls to be distributed or centralized depending on need.
- New opportunities – OT/IT integration provides new opportunities for efficiency and optimization across the entire value chain, thanks to a seamless incorporation of advanced data analytics techniques.
- Reduced costs – the software-defined approach to automation is expected to reduce engineering costs by 30%.
- Next-gen workforce – attracts the next generation of workers with a system that shared similarities with those in IT.
The partnership between GR3N and Schneider Electric, that has started with the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding, will enable the chemical
recycler to scale operations to new sites quickly and cost-effectively. The solution is expected to reach industrial scale by 2027 with the construction of a 35-40kta plant which will include the pre-treatment, depolymerization and repolymerization.
