Stoney's British Pub
3007 Concord Pike
Wilmington, DE
7:30pm
Eli FastowUniversity of Pennsylvania
“Plastic Recycling by Chemical Transformation: Unexpected Properties from Waste”
Though plastics (a subset of polymers) are essential for modern life, managing their waste remains an unsolved technical challenge. Polymer-to-polymer transformations promise to impart new properties into plastic waste. These transformations can also generate polymer molecules unachievable by conventional methods of plastic production. This would not only increase the value of recycled plastic, but also unlock a non-fossil fuel feedstock for specialty plastics already critical to the economy. We transform polyolefins (the largest category of plastics in the economy) to generate new materials with molecular architectures and properties otherwise inaccessible by conventional means of plastic production. Ultimately, we envision this approach as an instrument in the toolkit to manage plastic waste responsibly.