The current linear economy is based on the concept of “take-produce-consume-discard”. This model is unsustainable due to the unrealistic assumptions of unlimited resources and unrestricted waste disposal. A sustainable, circular economy enables economic development via reuse, recycling and upcycling of streams currently considered waste, such as used plastics. The lack of circularity in our current plastic economy poses a serious threat to the environment due to the increasing prevalence of plastics waste in landfills and aquatic environments along with the leaching of potentially toxic substances into the soil.<br/>Economically-feasible recycling and upcycling of polymers require scientific and technological advances to develop processes that can accept mixed polymer streams and multilayered and additive manufactured constructs as input, and hence minimize the current labor-intensive sorting and handling practices, and eliminate the barrier towards recycling and upcycling. Plastic waste streams can be a mixture of various types, such as vinyl polymers, oxygen-containing polymers, halogenated vinyl polymers, nitrogen-containing polymers, and elastomers.<br/>The fundamental mechanistic understanding of interaction effects in mixed plastics is nearly non-existent in the literature except for few studies. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and micro-pyrolysis reactors coupled to online gas chromatography analytics (Py-(GC)×GC-MS/FID) provide detailed information on the kinetic evaluation of solid to gas transformations. Accordingly, I will be presenting the kinetic analysis and product speciation results obtained through a systematic study performed with single streams of vinyl polymers and heteroatom containing polymers, and their mixtures. This mechanistic knowledge will enable accelerated reaction discovery and validation of reaction mechanisms and kinetic models.

Fundamental understanding of interaction effects in mixed plastic waste pyrolysis to enable accelerated reaction discovery for circular plastic economy

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