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Unlocking sustainable potential of photo-aged polyolefins in land and sea: An urchin-like Ru/CeO2 catalytic strategy for production of hydrocarbon fuels and waxes
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Scientists found a way to turn sun-damaged plastic waste, including the kind that breaks down into microplastics in oceans and landfills, into useful fuel and wax using a specially designed catalyst. Instead of treating weathered plastic as a hopeless environmental problem, this approach actually takes advantage of the cracks and chemical changes that sunlight causes, transforming what's usually seen as pollution into jet fuel components and other valuable materials. This matters because microplastics are a growing concern for human health and ecosystems, so finding practical ways to recycle already-degraded plastic could help reduce how much of it ends
Shifting the lens from the catalyst to the intrinsic physicochemical state of hazardous wastes, we unveil a macromolecular catalysis paradigm where the aging-induced modifications in polymer substrates dictate their catalytic hydrogenolysis pathways. By harnessing sunlight as a powerful engine, photo-aging process implants the signature alterations of "oxygenated functional groups, microcracks, and chain crosslinks" into polyolefins, creating specific weak links that reprogram their upcycling selectivity. With a tailored urchin-like Ru/CeO catalyst, we demonstrate divergent product streams from laboratory photoaged plastics: air-aged polyethylene yields narrow-distribution wax with a melting range of 94.7-101.8 °C (PDI = 1.64), whereas wet-aged polyethylene produces a liquid alkane stream (C5-C17) rich in fuel-range hydrocarbons. This pathway divergence extends to the hydrogenolysis of polystyrene, where aged plastics upgrades into potential aviation-fuel components of aliphatic alkanes and saturated cycloalkanes. Compared with the pristine plastics, the photo-aged microplastics were for the first time transformed from an emerging global hazard into a sustainable source for high-value fuels and chemicals.
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