Plastic: a new way to recycle it infinitely?

plastic waste they are now widespread everywhere due to our reliance on the use of this material. The main problem is related to the degradation and all reuse of these polymers it is not so easy. A team of researchers claims to have found a solution to recycle plastic endless.

The researchers, in a study published in Natural Chemistryclaim to have broken down a certain type of plastic, namely a thermosetting polymerused in industry space travel And microelectronicsto then reuse it to recreate the same material without losing its properties.

Thermosetting plastic is difficult to recycle because it resistant to condition extreme (including the heat), but mainly because the recycling process cancels them out property that matter of that polymer. It should also be taken into account that with each recycling process, the quality of the plastic is reduced by up to make it useless.

A bottle plastic will not be recycled and reused as such, but will be used in other forms, such as a bag or a handkerchief. At the end of several processes, the material must be discarded because: not useful anymore.

With the new methodcalled reversible or dynamic chemistryresearchers have come up with a new polymeric material that can be used to build objects that remade again and again. In this case, a bottle as such can be recycled and reused. This process can also be adapted to current industrial installations.

Our new approach allows us to create many new materials, some of which may have plastic-like properties in our daily lives.

Wei Zhang, lead author of the study