Themed collection Plastic Conversion

Guest Editors Ina Vollmer, Haritz Sardon, George W. Huber and Zhibo Li introduce the Catalysis Science & Technology and Polymer Chemistry cross-journal themed collection on plastic conversion.

Guest Editors Ina Vollmer, Haritz Sardon, George W. Huber and Zhibo Li introduce the Catalysis Science & Technology and Polymer Chemistry cross-journal themed collection on plastic conversion.

A perspective on using plastic waste as an alternative feedstock for the energy storage sector through upcycling. Materials for electrodes, electrolytes or binders could be obtained from both advanced combustion and depolymerization methods.

This review is focused on a number of issues that are essential for the industrial development of plastic waste pyrolysis technologies, including the role of catalysts, dehalogenation treatments, co-pyrolysis and process modelling and assessment.

Our biosphere has been adversely affected by plastic waste pollution, especially non-biodegradables in landfills, which induces hazardous chemical leaching and toxic gas emissions on burning into the atmosphere.

This review provides an overview of catalytic hydroconversion processes including hydrocracking, hydrogenolysis and hydrodeoxygenation for upcycling of plastic wastes into fuels and valuable chemicals.

This review highlights the recent advances and synthetic routes for the development of different vanillin-based polymers, including thermosets, thermoplastics, and covalent adaptable networks (CANs), and their properties.

Here we describe the main synthetic approaches for the production of CO₂-based polycarbonates and their emerging end-of-life scenarios by chemical re-/up-cycling.

This study describes the solvent-assisted organocatalysed depolymerisation of BPA-PC at low temperature for the selective formation of trimethylene carbonate. The key role of 1-methylimidazole as solvent and imidazole as catalyst is investigated.

Monomer design strategy via functional substitution served as a powerful tool to improve chemical recyclability of the resulting polymers and fine-tune their thermal and mechanical properties.

A photo-reversible and reusable polymer adhesive was designed and synthesized from bio-resources. Six unique monomers were evaluated via structure–property analysis, and the best polymer adhesive performance was optimized using statistical methods.

A catalytic strategy is presented for the selective conversion of OH groups in polyols, such as EVOH, while preserving the carbon backbone with applications for the recycling and compatibilization of multilayered polymer films.

This work provides a “polymer A to polymer B” strategy for the upcycling of CO₂-based poly(ether)carbonates to sulfur-containing polymers.

A commercially available magnesium catalyst is active as a polymerization and depolymerization catalyst, allowing access to bio-based polycarbonates and their recycling by methanolysis.

Catalyzed by copper sulfide nanoparticles (CuS NPs), polycarbonate (PC) degradation exhibits different degradation behaviors in varying solvents, showing competitive processes of chain scission, branching, and crosslinking.

The use of thermo-responsive polymers in switchable catalysts enables the efficient and homogeneous chemical recycling of post-consumer poly(ethylene terephthalate) and the heterogeneous separation of catalyst in a single system.

Readily available and economical alkali metal carbonates have been utilized to catalyze the ROAC of PA and various epoxides to afford polyesters with perfectly alternating sequence distribution, controlled molar masses, and moderate dispersity.

A strategy for upcycling poly(ethylene terephthalate) into a high-value UV-curable polyurethane acrylate coating using bio-based cardanol diol as a glycolysis agent.

We present here a green cyclodepolymerization route for the chemical recycling of poly(ethylene adipate) to its cyclic oligomers based on ring–chain equilibria in solution.

Upcycling of plastic waste is approached by designing multifunctional molecules for reactive compatibilization investigations of a model polymer blend, here polyethylene (PE) and poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) (EVOH).

Monomer design via functionalization serves as a promising strategy towards the development of inexpensive and high-performance chemically recyclable polymers.

The dynamic nature of oxa-Michael derived bonds in polymers is studied in this work. Brønsted base catalysis allows for reprocessing polymer networks at temperatures around 140 °C.

From plastic to functional elastomer by constructing Cu–S dynamic reversible bonds in CO₂-based polycarbonate.

Framework-Sn sites in Sn-Beta zeolites provide the required Lewis acidity to selectively catalyze the Diels–Alder cycloaddition between methyl acrylate and isoprene, affording a precursor to bio-terephthalic acid.

Chemically recyclable polymers composed of carbon and/or ester backbones were prepared by vinyl and ring-opening polymerizations of a cyclic ketene acetal ester.

The use of iron-catalysed chain growth of ZnEt₂ enables the synthesis of end-functionalised polyethylenes such as PE-I, which can be blended homogeneously into LDPE to affect the polymer degradability.

The first ε-CL polymerization/PCL depolymerization closed-loop chemical recycling process was developed under the catalysis of Mg(HMDS)₂.

Robust homoleptic zinc catalysts offer new opportunities for recycling polyesters such as poly(lactic acid) and poly(ethylene terephthalate) to obtain platform molecules in a plastics circular economy approach.

A new catalytic process was developed to produce raw materials for nylon production utilizing 100% of waste lignin emitted from industrial processes.

A transformation of LDPE in highly ordered doped-carbon materials by a simple one-step pyrolysis in presence of transition metal precursors is proposed. The graphitization, metal dispersion and CNFs presence are key factors for the high ORR performance.