News

Mining for rare earth metals could become economically and environmentally feasible though a process developed and patented at Purdue University.

Only nine percent of the world’s 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste has ever been recycled, according to a 2017 study in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. At the current rate, the amount of plastic in landfills will reach 12 billion metric tons by 2050.

Researchers in Purdue's Fuel Laboratory of Renewable Energy are working to answer the world's plastic waste problem. They are testing a new process that could convert polyolefin, a form of plastic, into new products.

The process could help convert millions of tons of plastic we generate every year into an gasoline and diesel-like fuel.

The United Nations estimates that more than 8 million tons of plastics flow into the oceans each year. A new chemical conversion process could transform the world’s polyolefin waste, a form of plastic, into useful products, such as clean fuels and other items.

Four Purdue University researchers have received a total of $105,000 from the Trask Innovation Fund to further develop their technologies, which range from detecting minute cracks in infrastructure to creating cool pads for hogs. Linda Wang, the Maxine Spencer Nichols Professor of Chemical Engineering, received $25,000 for “New Technologies for Converting Polyolefin Plastic Waste into Pristine Polymers or Clean Fuels" to convert plastic waste into clean fuel or other useful products.

A Purdue Chemical Engineering research team headed by Professor Linda Wang has been awarded silver prize in the 2018 Mobile World Congress Scholar Challenge for their project, “Waste coal ash could provide wealth of rare earth elements”.