Polymer editing can upcycle waste into higher-performance plastics

January 17, 2025- Chemists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a method to transform waste plastic into macromolecules that are more valuable than the original material. This breakthrough was achieved by chemically rearranging the structure of old polymers using two simultaneous processes, both involving metathesis reactions. In these reactions, parts of two reacting structures exchange positions.
The first process, ring-opening metathesis polymerization, opens carbon rings and extends them into long chains. The second, cross metathesis, integrates polymer subunits from one polymer chain into another.
According to ORNL, this innovative upcycling technique could address the global challenge of plastic waste, which amounts to approximately 450 million tons annually. Currently, only 9 percent of this waste is recycled, with the remainder being incinerated or discarded in landfills, oceans, and other environments.
The results of this work have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society under the title: ‘Polyalkenamers as Drop-In Additives for Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization: A Promising Upcycling Paradigm.’

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