Polyester Glycolysis: Chemical Textile-to-Textile Recycling

Recycled polyester is usually made by shredding old garments into fiber — a process that shortens the fibers a little more with every cycle. Chemical recycling takes a different route: it dissolves the polymer bonds themselves. This 2D companion models glycolysis, the industrial process that breaks polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fiber back down into bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET) monomer using excess ethylene glycol and a metal-salt catalyst. Tune temperature, catalyst loading and the EG:PET molar ratio to drive an Arrhenius-governed first-order reaction, and watch a top-down view of polyester chains break apart into free monomer in real time as conversion, number-average molecular weight and monomer yield update live.