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September 16, 2024

New Method Turns Plastic Waste Back to Monomers, it May Finally Make Polyolefins Fully Circular  

Scientists at UC Berkeley developed a new process that vaporizes plastic waste into propene which can then be used to make new plastic products. As a result, a fully circular economy for polyolefins may finally be possible. Polyolefins are cheap and have excellent properties, and as a result they are commonly used in several products including plastic bags, microwavable containers, and even in luggage. In fact, polyolefins such as Polyethylene and polypropylene make up about two-thirds of post consumer plastics waste worldwide, and it is estimated that about 80% ends up in landfills, on the street, in streams or in the ocean. Only a very small amount is recycled into low value plastics for use in decking, flowerpots, or other products. Given the circumstances, finding a way to make polyolefins fully circular would be highly beneficial. Researchers at UC Berkley may have found the perfect solution to this problem. Their newly developed technique turns plastics waste into monomer propylene (propene) which can be reused to make new plastics. The process relies on solid metal catalysts to create the necessary chemical reactions. Using solid instead of soluble metal catalysts makes the process scalable and using cheaper metals makes the process more cost effective. Through experimentation, the team figured out that the best metal catalysts to use were tungsten and sodium. Lead researcher John Hartwig said “This combination of tungsten oxide on silica and sodium on alumina is like taking two different types of dirt and having them together disassemble the whole polymer chain into even higher yields of propene from ethylene and a combination of propene and isobutylene from polypropylene than we did with those more complex, expensive catalysts." Learn more here. 

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