Project Description:

More than five billion tons of polyolefin waste has accumulated worldwide over the past 50 years. The majority (90%) of the world’s plastic waste goes directly into landfills and 3% ends up in the oceans. At the current rate, the planet will have 30 billion tons of plastic waste by 2050, and the oceans will have 250 million tons of plastics by 2025, or “one pound of plastics for every three pounds of fish”. Plastics are persistent in the environment and degrade slowly, releasing toxic microplastics and chemicals into the landfills and oceans. This pollution poses serious threats to our ecosystems, drinking water, food supply, and human health.
To reduce the accumulated plastic waste and $100 billion presently lost annually as polyolefin waste, we are developing novel methods for converting polyolefin waste into clean fuels and other useful products. We take a holistic approach using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to identify the most sustainable solutions. The specific goals are to (1) develop continuous hydrothermal processing methods for converting mixed polyolefin waste into clean fuels and other products; and (2) evaluate the environmental impact/benefits and optimize processing energy and costs through LCA and techno-economic analysis.

Start Date:

January 2023

Postdoc Qualifications:

Promising candidates should have Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, Biochemical Engineering, or Environmental Engineering, with strong research background in reaction engineering, chemical processing, materials characterizations, chemical synthesis, technical and economical analysis, or life cycle analysis

Co-Advisors:

Nien-Hwa Linda Wang, wangn@purdue.edu, CHE
Shweta Singh, singh294@purdue.edu, ABE

Outside Collaborators:

Dan Hasler, Hasler Ventures, hasler.dan@gmail.com

Bibliography:

1. Weeden, G. S. Jr., N. H. Soepriatna, and N.-H. L. Wang, Method for Efficient Recovery of High-Purity Polycarbonates from Electronic Waste,” Environmental Science and Technology, 49, 2425-2433 (2015).
2. Weeden, G. S. Jr., L. Ling, N. H. Soepriatna, and N.-H. L. Wang, “Size-Exclusion Simulated Moving Bed for Recovering High-Purity Phosphorous Flame Retardants with High Yield from Mixtures Containing Polymers,” J. of Chromatography A, 1422, 99-116 (2015).
3. Chen, W.-T., K. Jin, and N.-H. L. Wang, “Use of Supercritical Water for the Liquefaction of Polypropylene into Oil,” ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, 7, 3749-3758 (2019).
4. Jin, K., P. Vozka, W. T. Chen, G. Kilaz, and N.-H. L. Wang, “Conversion of Polyethylene Waste into Clean Fuels and Waxes via Hydrothermal Processing (HTP), Fuel, in press (2020).
5. Jin, K., P. Vozka, C. Gentilcore, G. Kilaz, and N.-H. L. Wang, “Low pressure hydrothermal processing of mixed polyolefin wastes into clean fuels,” Fuel, 294 (2021), 120505