PlastiBioFuel
PlastiBioFuel uses engineered enzymes to break down post-consumer PET plastic—including dyed, dirty, and mixed grades that traditional recyclers reject—and converts the resulting monomers into fuel-grade ethanol. The process runs in warm water at low temperatures, uses no food crops, and produces a drop-in biofuel compatible with existing gasoline infrastructure. The company has demonstrated the technology on real store-bought bottle plastic, achieving steady breakdown over 24 hours.
- Clean Technology
- Energy
- Biotechnology
- Chemical Technology
- Manufacturing / Industry 4.0
- Hardware
- New Materials
Funding
Founders
Founder details are not available yet.
Product
Problem
Global plastic recycling captures less than a third of what is produced, while the biofuel market remains dependent on food crops. Both industries lack an abundant, non-competitive feedstock that does not compete with the food supply, creating a dual environmental and economic challenge.
Solution
PlastiBioFuel provides an enzymatic platform that converts post-consumer PET plastic into renewable ethanol. The process uses immobilized, reusable enzymes to break down PET into its monomers at low temperatures, with the resulting monomer stream converted to ethanol in an integrated process. This approach accepts mixed, contaminated, and dyed plastic grades that traditional recycling rejects, turning waste disposal costs into a feedstock advantage. The output is a scalable, drop-in compatible biofuel produced with no agricultural inputs, offering a clean path to market for circularity and renewable fuel in a single platform.
Target Audience
Primary customers are biofuel producers, waste management companies, and sustainability-focused energy suppliers seeking a non-food-competitive feedstock for renewable fuel production.
Features
- Enzymatic depolymerization technology using immobilized, reusable enzymes held in a proprietary porous framework, operating at low temperatures in warm water
- Feedstock-flexible processing that handles mixed, contaminated, and dyed PET grades rejected by conventional recycling, including real store-bought bottle plastic
- Continuous spiral-flow reactor design that keeps plastic, catalyst, and liquid in contact, reduces dead zones, and scales by adding modules
- Integrated process combining breakdown, conversion, and ethanol recovery so the plant sells fuel rather than a low-value chemical intermediate
- Drop-in compatible biofuel output requiring no changes to existing fuel infrastructure, with no agricultural inputs or food-crop competition
- Patent-pending immobilization system, reactor design, and integrated process (U.S. provisional 63/848,456)