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SUMMARY:Improving Nylon-6 End of Life Pathways For a Circular Life Cycle
LOCATION:Chemistry A101
TZID:America/Denver
DTSTART:20250411T160000
UID:2026-05-25-09-09-10@natsci.colostate.edu
DTSTAMP:20260525T090910
Description:About the Seminar:\n\nOur society today has become highly relia
 nt on plastics for several different applications. Most of these materials
  come from ever depleting fossil fuel feedstocks and persist in the natura
 l environment for long periods of time due to poor biodegradability and di
 fficult recycling pathways. For these reasons improving the end of life ch
 emical recycling options for these plastics is of utmost importance. To re
 vert these materials back to their starting materials to be reused again n
 ot only decreases the accumulation of waste from these materials at their 
 end of life it also decreases the strain on fossil fuel feedstocks to prod
 uce these materials.  Nylon materials are a high-performance class of pol
 ymer that have been used in many applications due to their high thermal pr
 operties and excellent mechanical properties. Yet these same features that
  give these nylon materials these excellent properties often plague their 
 end-of-life considerations. Nylon-6 has been around since the 1940’s and
  has an expected market value of $21.5 billion in 2026\, thus investigatin
 g pathways for depolymerization of Nylon-6 is an important area of focus c
 urrently. This presentation will focus on recent work from Prof. Tobin Mar
 ks’ group at Northwestern University and their approach to depolymerize 
 Nylon-6 back to its starting monomer using a lanthanum-based catalyst and 
 solvent-free system. As well and some preliminary work done here at Colora
 do State University to depolymerize Nylon-6 using readily available\, chea
 p potassium-based salts and an investigation of the mechanistic pathway fo
 r this depolymerization. 4:00 pm
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