Mechanochemically Accelerated Deconstruction of 
Chemically Recyclable Plastics

Mutian Hua; Zhengxing Peng; Rishabh Guha; Xiaoxu Ruan; Ka Chon Ng; Jeremy Demarteau; Shira Haber; Sophia Fricke; Jeffrey Reimer; Miquel Salmeron; Kristin Persson; Cheng Wang; Brett Helms

doi:10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-rf93d

Materials Chemistry

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Mechanochemically Accelerated Deconstruction of Chemically Recyclable Plastics

14 December 2023, Version 1

Working Paper

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This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

Here, we show that when polymers are deconstructed as solids in a reaction medium that swells the polymer, the rate of chain cleavage is accelerated beyond that for bond cleavage in small molecule analogues. Moreover, by tailoring the reactive medium to promote swelling via kosmotropic and chaotropic principles, we show that the initial rates of deconstruction can be accelerated by up to 90%.

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Dec 14, 2023 Version 1

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The content is available under CC BY NC ND 4.0

DOI

10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-rf93d

Funding

Basic Energy Sciences

Unlocking Chemical Circularity in Recycling by Controlling Polymer Reactivity across Scales program CUP-LBL-Helms

Basic Energy Sciences

DE-AC02-05CH11231

Author’s competing interest statement

B.A.H. is an inventor on the U.S. provisional patent application 62/587,148 and submitted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that covers PDKs, as well as aspects of their use and recovery. E.A.D., J.D.K., A.R.E., K.A.P., and B.A.H. are inventors on the U.S. provisional patent application 63/390,962 submitted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that covers elastomeric PDKs, as well as aspects of their use and recovery. B.A.H. has a financial interest in Cyklos Materials and Sepion Technologies. The authors declare that they have no other competing interests.

Ethics

The author(s) have declared ethics committee/IRB approval is not relevant to this content