Finding a new polymer can solve the plastic waste crisis

The new polymer, which can be easily decomposed and then restructured into another item, is like a lego assembly.

For decades now, reducing the amount of waste and recycling them, especially plastic products - has always been one of the most costly topics of journalists around the world. Specifically, people can find recycling codes stamped on the bottom of the box, bottles and jars made of plastic to sort and recycle into useful new products.

The meaning of the code recycles at the bottom of plastic utensils.

Unfortunately, some plastics do not recycle as easily as others, thereby limiting their ability to reuse them in new products. Consequently, up to 8 million tons of plastic waste is released every year from the ocean.

Instead of studying to solve this plastic pile, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the US Department of Energy designed a new plastic. However, this new plastic can solve everything.

The new polymer , which can be easily decomposed and then restructured into another item, is like a lego assembly.

"Most plastic waste has never even been recycled. But this is a new method, allowing us to see the story of recycling from a molecular perspective ," said Peter Christensen, a chemist who participated in the study. .

Research team (from left): Peter Christensen, Kathryn Loeffler, and Brett Helms.(Credit: Marilyn Chung / Berkeley Lab).

Basically, all plastics are now sourced mainly from petroleum products such as crude oil. They are made of repetitive monomers, forming a net. This network can be mixed with many chemicals, allowing them to have a variety of properties, suitable for many different applications.

Among these, there are plastics that are easily resolved for recycling, but most do not. Plastic to make a bottle of water will be different from plastic as a toy, so if we melt it all, we will get a very unstable mixture, in other words . useless.

Christensen and his team discovered a polymer, called Polydiketoenamine, or PDK . It is made up of monomers called diketoenamine - a compound made by attaching triketone to an amine. Plastic with poly (diketoenamine) chain - or PDK can be easily destroyed, brought into monomeric form just soak in acid for about 12 hours.

The polymer chain is easily broken in theory that will allow us to isolate and reproduce continuous, unlimited plastics, creating a closed recycling loop for plastics.

The researchers also tried to add some other impurities to the PDK before dissolving in acid - like fiberglass, flammable compounds and additives. The results are amazing: the mixture of resolution just takes a few other simple steps to remove impurities, ready to make new products.

Each year up to 8 million tons of plastic waste goes out of the ocean.

To be able to recycle and really solve the global plastic crisis, and make this process as efficient and simple as possible, the newly developed plastic at Berkeley Lab is capable of meeting this need.

"With PDK, the constant links of ordinary resins are replaced by reversible links that allow plastics to be recycled more efficiently," said lead researcher Brett Helms.

However, currently, PDK is only recycled in the laboratory and the research team has not yet tested it on an industrial scale.

This is not the only polymer that can improve plastic recycling ability. Last year, researchers at Colorado State University developed a new plastic called Gamma-Butyrolactone (GBL) . By simply heating this polymer in the range of 220-300 ^degrees C, it will automatically decay into GBL single molecules. When we obtain a single molecule, they can be combined back into polymer, if the ambient temperature drops to -40 ^° C.

Currently, efforts to recycle plastics in countries are really not enough. In the US, they can only solve 1/4 of the PET plastic waste (often used as water bottles). The remainder is thrown into the landfill. That's why any idea that allows us to recycle plastic more easily should be rushed into reality, because we need it.