About the Seminar:

Though the plastic crisis continues to be a global concern, the recycling of common commodity polymers has only improved slightly, even as both the amount of plastic recycled and plastics produced from recycling increases each year. A promising avenue to enhance recycling processes is through a deeper understanding of depolymerization kinetics. A critical factor in these reactions is the ceiling temperature, above which the entropic penalties outweigh the favorable enthalpic effects, driving depolymerization. However, conventional depolymerization methods are highly energy-intensive, limiting their widespread application. Recent work [1] has demonstrated significant advancements in depolymerizating poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) by utilizing specific end-groups that lower the energy barrier for depolymerization. This study not only expands the scope of methacrylate polymer derivatives but also evaluates the efficiency of recycling depolymerized monomer into new materials. Overall, this work shows a potential route for improving aspects of recycling of current commodity polymers.