DOE’s ITV program selected nine projects nationwide for a combined $3 million in funding. Each project pairs a technology developer with an industrial host site that installs and operates the technology under real production conditions.
At Vernon, RheaCycle™ combines AI-designed enzymes with a proprietary downstream separation process to break PET down to its two building blocks, purified terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG). Because the enzymes act selectively on PET, the process accepts a wide range of post-consumer feedstocks, including thermoforms, contaminated PET, residual streams from existing recycling lines, and polyester textiles. The recovered monomers are virgin-equivalent and can be repolymerized into new PET with no loss of quality, cycle after cycle, giving these streams a direct path back into food-grade packaging.
The project will validate the integrated system on the PET streams handled at the Vernon facility, including recycling residuals, off-spec material, and thermoforms, under industrial operation. Energy efficiency is a core design metric for RheaCycle™: enzymatic depolymerization runs at low temperature and atmospheric pressure, and the validation will independently measure energy and water use per kilogram of recovered monomer.
“Bringing a technology like this to commercial scale takes more than good science,” said Dr. Arzu Sandikci, CEO and Co-founder of Rhea’s Factory. “It takes a federal program willing to fund independent validation, a national laboratory willing to measure it, an industry partner like Niagara willing to host it, and a startup that has already proven the science and built the process to run at industrial scale. This project brings all four together, and that’s how a new industry gets built.”
