Schneider Electric has partnered with "GR3N", a PET chemical recycler, to create the first open automation system for the advanced plastics recycling industry. With 50 percent of the world's plastic waste ending up in landfills and only nine percent recycled, "GR3N" developed "MADE". It stands for Microwave Assisted Depolymerization solution. The new process breaks down PET into its chemical building blocks, which 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. Based on alkaline hydrolysis, the technology can handle higher levels of impurities than existing processes.

In March 2024, "GR3N" successfully demonstrated "MADE" and the power of open automation technology of Schneider Electric, Eco Struxure Automation Expert, at its demonstration site in Italy. The "MADE" plant is designed to anticipate the use of all the technologies that will eventually be adopted for the first industrial-scale plant to be installed in Spain, with an expected capacity of over 40,000 tons of PET waste treated per year. The inherent modularity of "GR3N's" proprietary recycling process has allowed "MADE" to be the first plastics recycling plant to use the shared automation runtime managed by Universal Automation, based on the IEC 61499 standard. By decoupling hardware and software, the software-defined automation system allows devices and equipment to be freely connected across architectural layers, regardless of manufacturer. It acts as the digital backbone of industrial operations in the plant, providing the basis for more informed decisions. With this approach, "MADE" is also a technological demonstration of a new generation of automation systems, where the integration of OT and IT enables the use of advanced functionalities for operations management and data analytics.

Schneider Electric's software-defined automation system enables operational agility from proof of concept to industrial scale

“Through software-defined automation and hardware independence, we have been able to effectively de-risk our operations and push the boundaries of our technology,” said Fabio Silvestri, Head of Marketing and Business Development at “GR3N”. “We’ve been able to reconfigure our systems quickly when we see opportunities to improve efficiency, while avoiding supply chain issues due the hardware agnostic nature of the system. This is what is needed to make advanced plastic recycling at reality at scale.” The modular, agnostic nature of Eco Struxure Automation Expert allowed "GR3N" to select the optimal technology for the demonstration plant and easily scale to new sites. Benefits include:

• Industrial scalability: significantly minimizes investment risk when scaling the technology to a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) industrial plant, while providing a new way to protect its intellectual property as a process licensor.
• Design Flexibility: The vendor and hardware agnostic system allowed "GR3N" to design the best possible solution without being constrained by vendor lock-in or supply chain issues.
• Reduced engineering time and time-to-market: The modular design of control software, supported by digital continuity throughout the plant lifecycle with automation-oriented decision making at the design stage, reduces human error in the development phase by 40 percent.
• Control simplification: Vendor independence allows controls to be distributed or centralized as needed.
• New opportunities: OT/IT integration provides new opportunities for efficiency and optimization across the value chain by seamlessly incorporating advanced data analytics techniques.
• Reduced costs: The software-defined approach to automation is expected to reduce engineering costs by 30 percent.
• Attract the next generation of workers with a system that shares similarities with IT.

"GR3N" and Schneider Electric sign Memorandum of Understanding

By 2060, global demand for plastics is expected to triple, and the amount of plastic in the ocean is predicted to outnumber fish. Meeting demand and curbing pollution while achieving net zero by 2050 will require a revolution in consumption models. The partnership between "GR3N" and Schneider Electric, which began with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, will enable the chemical recycler to scale operations to new locations quickly and cost-effectively.  The solution is expected to reach industrial scale by 2027 with the construction of a 35-40 kta plant that will include pretreatment, depolymerization and repolymerization. 

Integration across the product cycle

“Every year, people produce around 460 million tons of plastic, approximately 70 percent of which are sent to landfills or mismanaged,” said Christophe de Maistre, President Energy & Chemicals, Industrial Automation at Schneider Electric. “If we want to overcome the scale of plastic waste, there are certain non-negotiables. We must see integration across the whole product cycle, modularization to optimize and standardize engineering processes, as well as software defined automation solutions that delivers scalability, break siloes and acts as a gateway to advanced analytics. This project with ‘GR3N’ demonstrates all of these principles, improving flexibility, scalability and the efficiency of their solution and enabling them to grow to an industrial scale.”