Abstract
Mechanical recycling of polymers downgrades them such that they are unusable after a few cycles. Alternatively, chemical recycling to monomer offers a means to recover the embodied chemical feedstocks for remanufacturing. However, only a limited number of commodity polymers may be chemically recycled, and the processes remain resource intensive. We use systems analysis to quantify the costs and life-cycle carbon footprints of virgin and chemically recycled polydiketoenamines (PDKs), next-generation polymers that depolymerize under ambient conditions in strong acid. The cost of producing virgin PDK resin using unoptimized processes is ∼30-fold higher than recycling them, and the cost of recycled PDK resin ($1.5 kg-1) is on par with PET and HDPE, and below that of polyurethanes. Virgin resin production is carbon intensive (86 kg CO2e kg-1), while chemical recycling emits only 2 kg CO2e kg-1. This cost and emissions disparity provides a strong incentive to recover and recycle future polymer waste.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | eabf0187 |
| Journal | Science Advances |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 15 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| ISSN | 2375-2548 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 9 Apr 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We acknowledge support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office award number 1916-1597. This work relied on tools and modeling capabilities from the Joint BioEnergy Institute (http://www.jbei.org) supported by the DOE, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research. Work at the Molecular Foundry-including process chemistry development for triketone monomer synthesis-was supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the DOE under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
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Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved.