Literature Seminar Abstract

The United States has recently taken on the burden of dealing with its own postconsumer plastic waste resulting in a bottleneck at recycling facilities and the dumping of readily recyclable materials into landfills. Alternatives to the current, inefficient recycling practices must be sought out in order to address the worsening issue of plastic pollution. Chemical recycling, a method for recovering polymer constituents or other high-value chemicals from polymer waste is starting to gain traction as a viable replacement for traditional mechanical recycling. Vinyl polymers, however, have proven to be troublesome for chemical recycling methods. Due to the extended alkane chain backbone, only harsh conditions have proven useful for their degradation. Recently, the Guan and Huang Groups employed cross alkane metathesis (CAM), a much milder approach, to upcycle the major contributor to vinyl polymer waste, polyethylene (PE), into fuels and waxes.
The methodology in this paper, as well as the future directions of vinyl polymer recycling, will be examined.

1. Jia, X.; Qin, C.; Friedberger, T.; Guan, Z.; Huang, Z. Efficient and Selective Degradation of Polyethylenes into Liquid Fuels and Waxes under Mild Conditions. Sci. Adv. 2016, 2 (6), e1501591