Pulsed pyrolysis offers better way to breakdown plastics into their building blocks

Good news! Lately, there are so many news about human ingenuity solving the issue of plastic recycling! Here is another one! The yield of this new method seems to be little bit low.

I bet in the near future we have developed some plastic made of biodegradable material etc.!

If you suffer from plastophobia, please seek immediate medical help!

From the abstract:

"Depolymerization is a promising strategy for recycling waste plastic into constituent monomers for subsequent repolymerization. However, many commodity plastics cannot be selectively depolymerized using conventional thermochemical approaches, as it is difficult to control the reaction progress and pathway. Although catalysts can improve the selectivity, they are susceptible to performance degradation. Here we present a catalyst-free, far-from-equilibrium thermochemical depolymerization method that can generate monomers from commodity plastics (polypropylene (PP) and poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)) by means of pyrolysis. This selective depolymerization process is realized by two features: (1) a spatial temperature gradient and (2) a temporal heating profile. The spatial temperature gradient is achieved using a bilayer structure of porous carbon felt, in which the top electrically heated layer generates and conducts heat down to the underlying reactor layer and plastic. The resulting temperature gradient promotes continuous melting, wicking, vaporization and reaction of the plastic as it encounters the increasing temperature traversing the bilayer, enabling a high degree of depolymerization. Meanwhile, pulsing the electrical current through the top heater layer generates a temporal heating profile that features periodic high peak temperatures (for example, about 600 °C) to enable depolymerization, yet the transient heating duration (for example, 0.11 s) can suppress unwanted side reactions. Using this approach, we depolymerized PP and PET to their monomers with yields of about 36% and about 43%, respectively. Overall, this electrified spatiotemporal heating (STH) approach potentially offers a solution to the global plastic waste problem."

Pulsed pyrolysis offers better way to breakdown plastics into their building blocks | Research | Chemistry World A new pyrolysis protocol for chemical recycling of polymers has been developed by researchers in the US. The technique, which uses pulses of electricity to heat the waste polymer, minimises side reactions and thereby produces more monomer.

Depolymerization of plastics by means of electrified spatiotemporal heating (no public access)

The reactor can break down polypropylene into its monomers with reasonable efficiency