A team of chemists from Virginia Tech University in the United States has discovered how to turn certain plastics into soaps, detergents, lubricants and other products, which could help solve the problem of plastic pollution.
After five years of research, the work of the team led by Greg Liu, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, was published in the scientific journal Nature Sustainability, the Spanish private news agency Europa Press reported today.
In simple terms, Liu’s system consists of two stages, the first of which is the use of thermolysis, or the decomposition of a substance by heat.
The plastic was placed in a reactor built by Liu’s team and heated to between 340 and 400 degrees Celsius, decomposing into chemical compounds in a mixture of oil, gas and minimal residual solids.
The gas could be used as fuel and with regard to the ‘product of greatest interest’, petroleum, the team managed to alter its chemistry, obtaining molecules that would become soaps, detergents, lubricants and other products.
According to the scientists, the process, which took less than a day, generated almost zero emissions of atmospheric pollution, which provides clues to a solution to the worldwide problem of plastic pollution.
Liu believes, however, that the next phase may be the most difficult – scaling up the system and making it profitable – so he is looking for help to test a business model.
To do this, he needs capital to build a reactor that will run continuously in his laboratory or in a private company to be set up off-site and which will allow him to experiment with speeding up the process.
The scientist promises that he will try to ‘reduce the risks of the process even further’ so that companies ‘can see the real value of it and adopt it’.
Lusa
