Researchers at the University of Alabama have developed a way of more efficiently and effectively recycling polymers.
Plastic recycling is commonplace but imperfect. Part of the problem, says Dr. Jason Bara, is that current processes yield lower-quality plastics with reduced value and fewer end uses. In a circular plastic economy, any plastic could be broken down to its component parts and then reconstituted into new products with little or no waste. The science is not there yet, but it may be one step closer. Dr. Jason Bara Bara, a professor in the College of Engineering, leads a team at The University of Alabama working to improve methods to recycle the ubiquitous plastics we interact with daily. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a common plastic that responds well to chemolysis, a chemical process that depolymerizes plastic for recycling. Much of the previous work on chemolysis and PET has focused on water, alcohols, and amines. Amines are a group of compounds derived from ammonia and are especially effective for PET depolymerization, but most products formed from the aminolysis of PET have limited uses, Bara said. "Let's See What Happens" Nothing in the literature pointed to the effectiveness of imidazoles in this process. Imidazole, and its related compounds, are a group of organic molecules that are used in a wide range of applications and even appear within biologically important compounds. "I've been working with imidazole for much of my career," said Bara. "It's pretty amazing how versatile it is." Bara had been working for two years with using…