A new type of catalyst breaks down polyolefin plastics into new, useful products. This project is part of a new strategy to reduce the amount of plastic waste and its impact on our environment, as well as recover value that is lost when plastics are thrown away. The catalyst was developed by a team from the Institute for Cooperative Upcycling of Plastic (iCOUP), a U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Frontier Research Center. The effort was led by Aaron Sadow, the director of iCOUP, scientist at Ames National Laboratory, and professor at Iowa State University; Andreas Heyden, professor at the University of South Carolina; and Wenyu Huang, scientist at Ames Lab and professor at Iowa State. The new catalyst is made only of earth-abundant materials, which they demonstrated can break carbon-carbon (CC) bonds in aliphatic hydrocarbons.
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Source: Phys.org