IN-PERSON EVENT 

By Prof. Haritz Sardon - POLYMAT, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain.

Abstract: Nowadays, less than 8% of the polymers produced each year are recycled and most of them are mechanically recycled: grinding and melt-processing, to obtain a low-quality material that will also rapidly ends up as a waste.[1] Besides mechanical recycling and pyrolysis, chemical recycling of plastic has emerged as a method to retain the value of the plastics as it allows to obtain high purity monomers. [2] As plastics have been traditionally designed for durability and not for recyclability, their chemical conversion to new products is nowadays considered a grand challenge and difficult to achieve [3] In this lecture we will summarize our main activities towards the selective chemical recycling of plastics and how we are trying to increase current recycling rates. 

References

[1] Sardon H.* & Dove A.P.,Plastic Recycling with a difference Science. 2018, 360. 380-381

[2] Jehanno C., Perez-Madrigal M., Demarteau J., Sardon H., Dove A.P.,Organocatalysis for depolymerisation J Polym. Chem. 2019, 10, 172-18

[3] Jehanno C., Flores I., Dove A.P., Müller A.J., Ruipérez F., & Sardon H.* Organocatalysed depolymerisation of PET in a fully sustainable cycle using thermally stable protic ion-ic salt Green Chem. 2018,20, 1205-1212.    

Hosted by ICREA Prof. Daniel Maspoch, Supramolecular NanoChemistry and Materials, Group Leader at ICN2.