The plastic debris we release into the environment has received a lot of attention due to ocean trash and overcrowded landfills. Communities all across the world are making a lot of effort to reduce, reuse, and recycle as a result. But what exactly does the term “recyclable” mean? Guoliang “Greg” Liu, an associate professor of chemistry in the College of Science, is in charge of a research group that is working to improve the field of plastic polystyrene recycling.
Many of us are comfortable dumping a metal can or a glass jar into the recycling bin without a second thought. Plastics, however, are a little unique. Every recycling facility is not set up to handle every kind of plastic. This is because different kinds of plastic have different chemical and structural properties that require different ways to recycle them.
Perhaps recycling facilities suited to handle any type of plastic would exist worldwide in an ideal world. But we’re still not there, in part because we haven’t yet created efficient, useful methods for processing some plastics, which are notoriously difficult to recycle.
One such difficult substance is polystyrene. Polystyrene, well recognized as a key ingredient in Styrofoam, is frequently used but hardly recycled. Residents of Blacksburg are advised by numerous municipal recycling facilities not to place polystyrene in their household recycling containers.
The primary recycling method for polystyrene now produces a product that is frequently too low-quality to make the process profitable. To put it another way, a recycling facility that attempts to recycle polystyrene on a wide scale will either require financial assistance, such as a government subsidy, or face the danger of going out of business and closing.
One answer to this challenge is to improve the recycling process such that it becomes economically viable, or even better, economically appealing. This is precisely what Liu was able to instruct his team to achieve because of his background in polymer chemistry and affiliation with the Macromolecules Innovation Institute.
The group describes a brand-new technique for recycling polystyrene in an article that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This process produces a highly valuable substance called diphenylmethane (DPM) by subjecting the material to ultraviolet light and adding a chemical catalyst. DPM is utilized as a precursor in the production of polymers, pharmaceutical research, and even as a scent in consumer goods. It’s significant that DPM costs 10 times more on the market than other products that can currently be created from recycled polystyrene.
The researchers went a step further in their examination to ensure that the new technique would attain the desired level of economic viability. Together with business professionals from Santa Clara University and Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, the Virginia Tech scientists conducted an analysis to ascertain the overall profitability of the recycling approach. Their findings demonstrated that the expense of gathering and processing the polystyrene would be entirely justified because of the great economic value of DPM.
Polystyrene would be motivated to be collected and recycled thanks to this new recycling technique, instead of ending up in landfills or becoming plastic pollution.
People need to understand that significant global issues like plastic waste can have different answers and will probably require this, according to Liu. “We at Virginia Tech can give answers to have a beneficial impact on the world and contribute a modest piece to the big puzzle.”
