Hydrogen Converts Common Plastic into High-Value Molecules

Most plastic recycling produces low-value materials -- but this team has found a way to turn a common plastic into high-value molecules.

We all know about the volume of plastic that gets thrown away each year, and that only a small fraction gets recycled.

Chemistry professor and researcher Susannah Scott at the University of California Santa Barbara has a solution. She is a chemist with experience in designing processes for making plastics, and became interested in using plastic as a large, untapped resource for energy and materials. She wondered if her team could turn plastic waste into something more valuable to keep it out of landfills and the natural environment.

Her team at Santa Barbara, working with colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Cornell, discovered a clean way to turn polyethylene into useful smaller molecules.

Since the process of making the chains in the first place releases a lot of energy, reversing it requires adding a large amount of energy back in. Generally this means heating up the material to a high temperature – but heating up plastic causes the stuff to turn into a nasty mess. It also wastes a lot of energy, meaning more greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Scott's solution eliminates that energy waste...

Read about the full solution, with diagrams, at Cleantech Concepts, and sign up for our newsletter covering cleantech R&D.

Source: UC Santa Barbara, The Conversation, and Cleantech Concepts.

Tom Breunig is publisher and managing editor of Cleantech Concepts, a media and analysis firm that tracks cleantech R&D for a look at what's over the horizon.