Additive Manufacturing of Recombinant Elastic Proteins for Sustainable Non-Woven Textiles

Conventional high-performance textiles are manufactured using petroleum-derived feedstocks and energy intensive processing with limited biodegradability. This limited biodegradability results in microplastics currently being ubiquitous in the environment. Synthetic materials have dominated global fiber production since the 1990s. There is a need for scalable high-performance bio-based materials that are biodegradable, non-toxic, derived from renewable resources, and produced using sustainable agroecological practices. Current strategies for producing recombinant raw materials for next-generation fibers have challenges related to scaling up to commercial scale due to costly purification processes, genetic instability of proteins with highly repetitive amino acid sequences, transcription and translation errors, and high-volume protein production can be associated with metabolic burden. During Phase I, Good Fibes will leverage the thermoresponsive properties of elastic proteins to (1) advance scaling of thermal separation processes for non-woven textiles and (2) develop additive manufacturing methods for novel non-natural elastic protein-based compositions. The Phase I work will establish feasibility of integrating the elastic proteins in a non-woven manufacturing process. The Phase II project could advance the research and development of the elastic non-woven textiles to ensure commercial viability. If successful, this technology could provide end-of-life solutions for the fashion industry, create competitive alternatives to petroleum-derived elastic textiles and drive transformation towards a circular textile economy.