Turn waste into treasure! Chinese scientists have achieved efficient and harmless upgrading and recycling of chlorine containing waste plastics. Upgrade | Plastic | Turn Waste into Treasure
Application fields of upgraded and recycled chlorinated plastics
Shanghai, June 10th (Xinhua) - Chlorinated plastics are one of the widely used plastics in daily life. Waste chlorine containing plastics have extremely high stability and are not only difficult to self degrade, but also release various toxic chlorine containing organic compounds during traditional high-temperature thermal degradation processes, posing a threat to the ecological environment and human health.
Recently, Huang Fuqiang, the chief researcher of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Silicate Research Institute, used a new normal temperature dechlorination method to directly convert chlorine containing waste plastics into a variety of new materials with high added value, successfully achieving efficient and harmless upgrading and recycling, which can be widely used in green environmental protection, new energy storage, medical devices, wearable devices and other fields. The relevant results were recently published in the sub issue of Nature magazine, Nature Review: Introduction to Methods.
"The Earth has accumulated billions of tons of discarded plastic, which is still being produced at an astonishing rate every year. We hope to develop a new method of upgrading and recycling that combines cost-effectiveness and environmental friendliness, for green and efficient disposal of chlorine containing waste plastics," said Huang Fuqiang.
Traditional processes use incineration to treat chlorine containing plastic waste, which generates carbon dioxide and toxic gases containing chlorine during the degradation process. Upgraded recycling adopts a new room temperature dechlorination method, which directly separates all chlorine elements from waste plastics and ultimately converts waste plastics into various high value-added new materials.