Less than 10 per cent of the world’s polystyrene is currently recycled. A new method that upcycles it into more valuable products could help change that
Researchers have found a way to upcycle plastic waste into more valuable products, which they say could help tackle the growing accumulation of non-degradable waste polluting our cities and threatening life in our oceans.at Virginia Tech and his colleagues have developed a method to break down polystyrene and convert it into a chemical that is far more valuable. The process is energy efficient and adaptable to other plastics, the researchers say.
Liu and his colleagues used ultraviolet light as an energy source and aluminium chloride as a catalyst to break down the chemical structure of the polystyrene. They then used the same catalyst and added dichloromethane, a clear liquid commonly used as a solvent, to generate diphenylmethane. The reaction takes place at ambient temperature and at atmospheric pressure, so it requires less energy than existing methods of recycling or upcycling polystyrene. The process is easy to adopt and could be profitable at a large scale, according to the team’s economic analysis.
Liu’s team is developing a catalogue of other valuable chemicals that could be obtained by changing the chemical reaction used in the final step of the upcycling process.
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