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Upcycling plastic waste into more valuable materials could make recycling pay for itself

Posted by Tony Cowger on

Good News Notes:

“A new and simple method for upcycling plastic waste at room temperature has been developed by a team of researchers at the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath. The researchers hope the new process will help recycling become more economically viable.

Plastic waste residing in either landfill or the natural environment currently outweighs all living biomass (4 Giga tonnes), culminating in one of the great environmental challenges of the 21st century. Whilst recycling rates are increasing across Europe, traditional methods remain limited because the harsh remelting conditions reduce the quality of the material each time it’s recycled.

Now researchers at the CSCT have developed a mild and rapid chemical recycling process for polycarbonates, a robust class of plastics commonly used in construction and engineering.

Using a zinc-based catalyst and methanol, they were able to completely break down commercial poly(bisphenol A carbonate) (BPA-PC) beads within 20 minutes at .

The waste can then be converted into its chemical constituents, namely bisphenol A (BPA) and dimethyl carbonate (DMC), helping to preserve  over an infinite number of cycles.

Importantly, BPA recovery prevents leakage of a potentially damaging environmental pollutant, whilst DMC is a valuable green solvent and building block for other industrial chemicals.

Their results are published in ChemSusChem, noting enhanced process efficiency and milder conditions compared to previous methods.

Promisingly, the catalyst is also tolerant to other commercial sources of BPA-PC (e.g. CD) and mixed waste feeds, increasing industrial relevance, whilst being amenable to other plastics (e.g. poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)) at higher temperatures.

The team has also demonstrated a completely circular approach to producing several renewable poly(ester-amide)s (PEAs) based on terephthalamide monomers derived from waste PET bottles. These materials have excellent thermal properties and could potentially be used in biomedical applications, for example drug delivery and tissue engineering….”

View the whole story here: https://phys.org/news/2022-02-upcycling-plastic-valuable-materials-recycling.html

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