Simple chemistry can recycle polystyrene into more valuable products

There is a person by the name of "luke Taylor."

Researchers have found a way to upcycle plastic waste into more valuable products, which they say could help tackle the growing amount of non-degradable waste in our cities.

A method to break down polystyrene has been developed by a group of people at Virginia Tech. The process is energy efficient and can be adapted to other plastic types.

There is no economic incentive for countries to recycle less than 10 per cent of the world's polystyrene. Polystyrene waste is expensive to transport and costly to break down, and recycling it only creates more of it.

Takeaway food containers made from polystyrene don't break down easily. They can make their way into the sea through rivers or burn themselves to death.

Ultra violet light and aluminum chloride were used as catalysts to break down the polystyrene. They added dichloromethane to the catalyst to make diphenylmethane.

Diphenylmethane is used in a wide range of products. The conversion creates an incentive to reduce the amount of polystyrene waste.

It requires less energy than other methods because it takes place at ambient temperature and at atmospheric pressure. The process is easy to implement and profitable at a large scale according to the team.

Standard chemistry is the most intriguing thing. We are not using strict conditions or expensive catalysts. The components that we use for this process are easy to find.

A catalogue of valuable chemicals can be obtained by changing the chemical reaction used in the final step of upcycling.

It could help turn one of the largest environmental threats into a sustainable circular economy by applying the concept to almost all other plastic.

The process is more cost efficient than other methods, but it could take more time as it is scaled up, says Bushra Al-Duri. The solvent used in the process could make it difficult to carry out at an industrial level.

The journal is called PNAS and it can be found on the internet at 10.1073/pnas.