Featured Publication
The Scott Group Publishes New Findings on Plastic Upcycling in the Journal of the American Chemical Society
Researchers develop an efficient, low-energy method for upcycling polyethylene waste into propylene, creating a second life for some waste plastic.
UCSB researchers in collaboration with researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Dow have discovered a new, scalable catalytic process to convert polyethylene (plastics #2 and #4) to propylene, the building block of polypropylene (plastic #5). Compared with conventional methods that require high temperatures (over 500 °C) to break down the polymer chains into smaller hydrocarbon molecules, the new process works under relatively mild conditions (about 100 °C and atmospheric pressure of ethylene, added continuously to the reactor) over a solid catalyst. In contrast to fossil fuel-based routes for making propylene, the use of waste polyethylene as a source of carbon for making polypropylene shows environmental promise in reducing plastic waste, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing circularity.
Citation
Chemical Recycling of Polyethylene by Tandem Catalytic Conversion to Propylene
Nicholas Wang, Garrett Strong, Vanessa DaSilva, Lijun Gao, Rafael Huacuja, Ivan Konstantinov, Mari Rosen, Alex Nett, Sean Ewart, Roland Geyer, Susannah Scott*, Damien Guironnet*
Journal of the American Chemical Society. 2022 (DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c07781).
Complete Publication List
Solvent effects on catalytic activity and selectivity in amine-catalyzed D-fructose isomerization
Peter Drabo, Matthias Fischer, Meike Emondts, Jegor Hamm, Mats Engelke, Marc Simonis, Long Qi, Susannah L. Scott, Regina Palkovits*, Irina Delidovich*
Journal of Catalysis. 2023, 418, 13-21
Chemical Recycling of Polyethylene by Tandem Catalytic Conversion to Propylene
Nicholas Wang, Garrett Strong, Vanessa DaSilva, Lijun Gao, Rafael Huacuja, Ivan Konstantinov, Mari Rosen, Alex Nett, Sean Ewart, Roland Geyer, Susannah Scott*, Damien Guironnet*
Journal of the American Chemical Society. 2022 (DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c07781).