Polyethylene is the silent workhorse of the modern world, found in everything from grocery bags to kitchen cutting boards. Yet, its chemical stability—the very trait that makes it useful—renders it a persistent environmental burden. While mechanical recycling exists, it often degrades the material’s quality. For years, the most promising alternative has been pyrolysis, a process that breaks plastic down into fuel, but its requirement for temperatures exceeding 450 degrees Celsius has made it an energy-intensive and costly endeavor.
A team at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has now proposed a more elegant solution. Detailed in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, their method utilizes a mixture of molten salts and aluminum chloride. This combination serves a dual purpose: it acts as both a solvent and a catalyst, allowing the plastic to break down into gasoline and diesel components without the extreme heat typically required.
The breakthrough lies in the stability of these inorganic salts, which remain effective even under demanding reaction conditions. By lowering the thermal threshold, the process significantly reduces the energy overhead of chemical recycling. If scalable, the technique could transform plastic waste from a landfill liability into a viable feedstock for the energy sector, offering a rare bridge between the petrochemical past and a more circular future.
With reporting from Xataka.
Source · Xataka
