04.10.2022
Scientists have created a way to reduce the climate footprint of plastic
Photo by: JakeOlimb / iStock
Scientists have developed a method by which plastic can be recycled almost indefinitely without losing its physical properties through a chemical process. It allows the material to be broken down into its basic ’building blocks’ and reassembled into its original structure.
Conventional recycling methods involve breaking polymers down mechanically into powders, incinerating them or dissolving them using bacterial enzymes.
The end result is smaller pieces of plastic, which can then be made into building materials, clothes or shoes, for example. In this way, waste produces a product that does not, however, have the same properties as a product made from virgin raw materials.
A new study by scientists at the University of Colorado in the US, published in the journal Nature Chemistry, describes a way of completely recycling polycyanurates, a class of polymers widely used in the aerospace and microelectronics industries.
Normally, such plastics are difficult to recycle for later use because they are very strong and retain their shape and integrity at extreme temperatures.
According to Wei Zhang, Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Colorado, he and his colleagues thought of unconventional ways to break chemical bonds. They revised the structure of the polymer, which consists of molecules of aromatic hydrocarbons and cyanic acid derivatives.
Chemists replaced some of the carbon atoms with nitrogen and combined the remaining carbon with oxygen. The result of this process is a new type of single polymer unit which is very strong and heat resistant but can be broken down into its constituent parts by using a heated solution of alcohol with potassium carbonate.
Experiments have shown that the method makes it possible to decompose and regenerate plastics without losing their properties many times over.
This makes it much cheaper to produce new plastic objects and protects nature from being polluted by plastic waste.
Professor Wei Zhang added that the very idea of recycling plastics in a closed cycle was inspired by the natural world, in which plants, animals and humans are also part of the planet’s cycle of elements.
The plastic problem is an important climate challenge. As well as littering the environment, plastic recycling and its ’invasion’ of natural communities has a negative impact on the climate.
Cover photo: mtcurado / iStock
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