BOTTLE Project Outlines New Strategy for Valorization of

Golden, CO, Oct. 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Combining chemical and biological processes is a promising new strategy for the valorization of mixed plastic waste, according to researchers with the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment (BOTTLE) Consortium.

Waste plastics have emerged as a global energy and pollution problem as ineffectively managed materials continue to accumulate in landfills and the environment. Only about 5% is recycled in the United States, with existing strategies requiring separated and clean plastic inputs to operate effectively.

Different plastics comprise different polymers, each with their own unique chemical building blocks. When polymer chemistries are mixed—either in a collection bin or formulated together in materials such as multilayer packaging—recycling becomes expensive and difficult because each polymer often must be separated prior to chemical deconstruction. The BOTTLE researchers developed a process that can convert mixed plastics to a single chemical product, working toward a solution that would allow recyclers to skip sorting plastic by type.

“This is a potential entry point into processing plastics that cannot be recycled at all today,” said Gregg Beckham, a senior research fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and head of BOTTLE. Beckham is the senior author of a new paper published in the journal Science that details work creating a tandem chemical and biological process to produce single high-value products from waste plastic. The paper, “Mixed plastics waste valorization through tandem chemical oxidation and biological funneling,” was co-authored by NREL researchers and BOTTLE team members from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The process builds upon work pioneered a decade ago: Chemical oxidation can be used to…