Solar thermal catalysis for sustainable and efficient polyester upcycling

作者：

Yu Liu,¹ Qixuan Zhong,¹ Panpan Xu,² Heqin Huang,³ Fan Yang,⁴ Muhan Cao,¹ Le He,¹ Qiao Zhang,¹ and Jinxing Chen^1,*

单位：

¹Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials(FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, P.R. China

²Key Laboratory of Multifunctional Nanomaterials and Smart Systems, Advanced Materials Division, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, P. R. China

³Department of Wood Technology and Wood-based Composites, University of Göttingen, Büsgenweg 4, Göttingen 37077, Germany

⁴Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA

摘要：

Although the extraction of value-added products from end-of-life plastics brings significant environmental and economic returns, the current recycling technologies are limited by their low efficiency and high energy consumption. Here, we propose an efficient solar thermal catalysis to recycle various polyesters into high value-added monomer derivatives with low energy consumption and carbon emissions. Compared with the traditional thermal catalysis of homogeneous heating, the solar thermal process exhibits a unique localized solar heating effect, forming a temperature gradient from the solar absorber to the bulk solution. This effect allows a lower depolymerization temperature (150℃), but the recycling efficiency is increased by threefold, unattainable by thermal catalysis. Furthermore, the solar thermal process can reduce energy consumption by 3.7 GJ and CO2 emissions by 0.4 tons per ton of polyester treated compared with the thermal catalysis. Therefore, solar thermal catalysis opens an efficient, high-profit, and eco-friendly way to reuse waste plastics.

影响因子：

15.589

分区情况：

一区

链接：

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2590238522000534