Turning plastic waste into useful products through chemical recycling is one strategy for addressing Earth's growing plastic pollution problem.
Turning plastic waste into useful products through chemical recycling is one strategy for addressing Earth's growing plastic pollution problem. A new study may improve the ability of one method, called pyrolysis, to process hard-to-recycle mixed plastics — like multilayer food packaging — and generate fuel as a byproduct, the scientists said.
Pyrolysis involves heating plastic in an oxygen-free environment, causing the materials to break down and creating new liquid or gas fuels in the process. Current commercial applications, however, either operate below the necessary scale or can only handle certain type of plastics, the scientists said.
“We have a very limited understanding of mixed-plastic pyrolysis,” said Hilal Ezgi Toraman, assistant professor of energy engineering and chemical engineering at Penn State. “Understanding the interaction effects between different polymers during advanced recycling is very important while we are trying to develop technologies that can recycle real waste plastics.”
Read More: Penn State University
A stack of mixed plastic waste Credit: Pixabay
