{"id":195833,"date":"2024-09-07T13:23:10","date_gmt":"2024-09-07T18:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/uc-berkeley-chemists-can-now-vaporize-plastic-waste-into-molecular-building-blocks"},"modified":"2024-09-07T13:23:10","modified_gmt":"2024-09-07T18:23:10","slug":"uc-berkeley-chemists-can-now-vaporize-plastic-waste-into-molecular-building-blocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/uc-berkeley-chemists-can-now-vaporize-plastic-waste-into-molecular-building-blocks","title":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley Chemists Can Now Vaporize Plastic Waste Into Molecular Building Blocks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/uc-berkeley-chemists-can-now-vaporize-plastic-waste-into-molecular-building-blocks2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With mechanical recycling, \u201cif you mix the sandwich bag and the milk jug together and then try to remake an object from that, you can\u2019t make a very good milk jug and you can\u2019t make a very good sandwich bag,\u201d he said. <em> <\/em> \u201cWe\u2019re trying to bring the plastics back to the chemicals from which they\u2019re made in the first place,\u201d Hartwig said.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers use a catalyst, a component of a chemical reaction that makes it go faster, to vaporize both polyethylene and polypropylene plastics \u2014 two of the largest volumes of plastics in existence \u2014 transforming the solid waste into gases.<\/p>\n<p>The polymers are reduced to their chemical precursors, which can then be reconstructed. In a press release, the university said the process brings \u201ca circular economy for plastics one step closer to reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With mechanical recycling, \u201cif you mix the sandwich bag and the milk jug together and then try to remake an object from that, you can\u2019t make a very good milk jug and you can\u2019t make a very good sandwich bag,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to bring the plastics back to the chemicals from which they\u2019re [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,39,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-economics","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}