Upcycling of Waste Poly(ethylene terephthalate) into 2,4-Pyridine Dicarboxylic Acid by a Tandem Chemo-Microbial Process

Abstract

Thisstudy presents a chemo-microbial cascade process for the upcycling of wastepoly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) into valuable compound 2,4-pyridine dicarboxylic acid (2,4-PDCA).Initially, waste PET undergoes efficient hydrolysis to terephthalic acid (TPA)with a high yield of 92.36%, catalyzed by p-toluenesulfonic acid (PTSA). The acid catalyst exhibitsexcellent reusability, maintaining activity over five cycles. Subsequently, aone-pot, two-step whole-cell conversion system utilizing genetically modified Escherichia coli strains (E. coli PCA and E. coli 2,4-PDCA) converts thegenerated TPA into 2,4-PDCA. By integrating the PET hydrolysis module with the2,4-PDCA biosynthesis module, the study achieves an impressive overallefficiency of 94.01% in converting challenging PET waste into valuable2,4-PDCA. Our research presents a rational design strategy for PET upcyclingand 2,4-PDCA synthesis methods. This research provides a systematic approach toPET upcycling, demonstrating its feasibility and potential for industrialapplication.

Keywords

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) / Plastic upcycling / Chemo-microbial process / 2,4-Pyridine dicarboxylic acid

Supplementary Materials

The following supporting information can be found at: https://www.sciepublish.com/article/pii/371, Figure S1: PET bottle from local supermarket. Table S1: Bacterial strains and plasmids. Table S2: Primers used in this study. Table S3: Gene information used in this study.

Acknowledgments

We express our thanks for funding support from the National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFC2103600) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22408019).

Author Contributions

Z.W.: Writing—original draft, Methodology, Investigation. G.X.: Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision; Writing—review and editing. Y.L.: Investigation, Data curation. H.S.: Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing—review and editing.

Ethics Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Funding

This research was funded by National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFC2103600) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22408019).

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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