![]() Method will not resolve the plastics problem in the short termĮven if this new method raises hopes of solving humankind's plastic waste problem, Anastasaki dismisses the idea for the time being. She is particularly interested in polystyrene, a widespread, low-cost plastic that is used in many areas of everyday life (Styrofoam). The materials scientist is also researching whether other polymers can be depolymerised. The researchers also aim to increase the amount retrieved and recover all the building blocks of a polymer. To address this drawback, she and her group are already working on expanding the method for large-scale applications, which will make it more competitive and the resulting products cheaper. This is in contrast to previous products made from recycled polymers.īut there is a catch: "Products made with RAFT polymerisation are more expensive than conventional polymers," says Anastasaki. The newly created products are of similar quality to the original ones. Producing the same or a different productĪccording to Anastasaki, the building blocks recovered in this way can be used to produce the same polymer or a completely different product - an insoluble hydrogel that can also be broken down into its monomers. Researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra were able to confirm the results mathematically. By heating the polymer solvent mixture to 120☌, the researchers created what are referred to as "radicals" at the end of a polymethacrylate chain, which triggered the depolymerisation. The chemical group present at the end of a polymer chain is crucial for the polymer's breakdown. This could increase the amount recovered even more," says Anastasaki. ![]() "Our method could conceivably be developed even further to involve the use of a catalyst. The researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in recovering up to 92 percent of the building blocks of polymethacrylates without adding a catalyst that would enable or accelerate the reaction. This relatively new method, which is now also attracting the interest of industry, produces polymer chains of uniform length. ![]() Plexi Glass) that were produced using a specific polymerisation technique called reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer polymerisation - otherwise known as RAFT. The polymers broken down are polymethacrylates (e.g. In it, Anastasaki and her colleagues show that they can break down certain polymers into their basic building blocks - monomers - and recycle them for use in materials for further applications. The materials scientist has been able to take a first important step in this direction: A study by her group has just been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. She has set herself the goal of producing polymers that can be easily broken down into their building blocks so that they can be fully recycled. Added to this is the fact that recycled polymers are usually only used in the manufacture of low-value products.Īthina Anastasaki, Professor of Polymeric Materials at ETH Zurich, wants to change this. Another reason is that the depolymerisation processes used to date require a lot of energy, which has made them economically unviable. Whether a polymer can be broken back down at all into its constituent parts depends on which of the different polymer manufacturing processes were used. ![]() One reason for this is that breaking down polymers is a complex process. ![]() However, while the formation of polymers is well established and well researched, scientists have given little attention to how polymer chains are broken down (a process called depolymerisation) to recover their individual building blocks - monomers. Polymers are the basis of all kinds of everyday plastics, such as PET and polyurethane. This involves turning small molecular building blocks into long chains of molecules that bond together. The chemical industry has a long tradition of producing polymers. ![]()
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