polymer recycling Archives

Mechanochemistry: A new route to sustainable polymer recycling

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Junpeng Wang investigates how mechanochemistry and chemical unlocking can be used in combination to prepare degradable polymers that are otherwise too challenging to synthesise using standard synthetic routes.

Plastics and rubbers are some of the most important materials in advanced societies, and hundreds of millions of tonnes are produced every year. Devising efficient and cost-effective ways to recycle these materials has become a crucial environmental concern. Although degradable plastic-based materials can be produced, their practical use is limited by their vulnerability under environmental stress. Professor Junpeng Wang and […]

Waste into starting materials: Solvent-based recycling for the polymer industry

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Internal view of a processing plant in Germany where solvent-based recycling of plastic polymers promises to reduce the plastic waste streams and recycle contaminated plastics back into usable plastic granules.

Polymer manufacturing is an essential business, but it poses a number of challenges from an environmental perspective. Many chemical processes are energy intensive as they require high temperatures or pressure to occur. Finding ways of reusing and recycling waste into valuable components is therefore incredibly important. At APK AG in Germany, the team around Dominik Triebert and Hagen Hanel has […]