Cascade degradation and upcycling of polystyrene waste to high-value chemicals.

ABSTRACT: Plastic waste represents one of the most urgent environmental challenges facing humankind. Upcycling has been proposed to solve the low profitability and high market sensitivity of known recycling methods. Existing upcycling methods operate under energy-intense conditions and use precious-metal catalysts, but produce low-value oligomers, monomers, and common aromatics. Herein, we report a tandem degradation-upcycling strategy to exploit high-value chemicals from polystyrene (PS) waste with high selectivity. We first degrade PS waste to aromatics using ultraviolet (UV) light and then valorize the intermediate to diphenylmethane. Low-cost AlCl₃ catalyzes both the reactions of degradation and upcycling at ambient temperatures under atmospheric pressure. The degraded intermediates c

SUBMITTER: Xu Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9407675 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature