Papers

61,005 results
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Article Tier 2

Recent Advances in Catalytic Chemical Recycling of Polyolefins

This review examines recent scientific advances in catalytic chemical recycling of polyolefins such as polyethylene and polypropylene, which account for nearly 50% of all plastic production by mass. Researchers highlight catalytic processes that can break down polyolefin waste at lower temperatures than pyrolysis, with the goal of upcycling discarded plastics into functional chemicals rather than sending them to landfill.

2023 ChemCatChem 82 citations
Article Tier 2

Cross-Linked Polyolefins: Opportunities for Fostering Circularity Throughout the Materials Lifecycle

This review examines cross-linked polyolefins, a significant class of plastics that are typically incinerated or landfilled because they cannot be melted for reprocessing. Researchers assessed both traditional mechanical recycling and advanced recycling methods for improving circularity of these materials. The study highlights opportunities to reduce plastic waste through biobased feedstocks, extended product lifespans, and recyclable-by-design strategies for future cross-linked polyolefin products.

2024 ACS Applied Polymer Materials 18 citations
Article Tier 2

Conversion of Polyolefin Waste Into Fuels and Other Valuable Products by Hydrothermal Processing

This research explored ways to convert plastic waste, including polyolefins like polyethylene and polypropylene, into usable fuels and other valuable products through hydrothermal processing. Finding efficient recycling pathways is critical given that only 9% of the 350 million tons of plastic waste generated annually is currently recycled.

2021 Figshare
Article Tier 2

Expanding plastics recycling technologies: chemical aspects, technology status and challenges

This review examined the full life cycle of plastics and evaluated options for managing plastic waste, with a focus on chemical recycling technologies. The study suggests that overcoming barriers to industrial chemical recycling could open new opportunities for reducing plastic pollution.

2022 Green Chemistry 511 citations
Article Tier 2

Recent Progress in Polyolefin Plastic: Polyethylene and Polypropylene Transformation and Depolymerization Techniques

This review covers new methods for breaking down polyethylene and polypropylene, the two most common types of plastic, into reusable materials. Since mechanical recycling only handles a small fraction of plastic waste, chemical approaches like pyrolysis and hydrogenolysis offer more promising solutions. These techniques are important because the breakdown of these same plastics into microplastics is a major source of environmental and health contamination.

2024 Molecules 10 citations
Article Tier 2

Sistemas de revalorización de poliolefinas procedentes de residuos sólidos urbanos

This Spanish thesis examined systems for recovering and reusing polyolefin plastics from municipal solid waste, evaluating mechanical and chemical recycling approaches. Improving plastic recovery rates reduces the volume of plastic waste that eventually fragments into microplastics in landfills and the environment.

2023
Article Tier 2

Sustainable Petrochemical Alternatives From Plastic Upcycling

This review examined pathways for upcycling plastic waste into sustainable petrochemical alternatives, addressing the poor end-of-life recovery prospects that allow carbon-rich plastics to degrade into microplastics in landfills and oceans. The paper assessed chemical and thermochemical conversion technologies that could turn plastic waste into feedstocks for the chemical industry.

2024 4 citations
Article Tier 2

Current Advances and Challenges in Chemical Recycling of Polymeric Materials

This review examines current advances and remaining challenges in chemical recycling of polymeric materials as an alternative to mechanical recycling, which degrades material properties with repeated cycling. The authors discuss the high efficiency and simpler preprocessing requirements of chemical recycling methods against a backdrop of approximately 150 million metric tonnes of annual global plastic waste generation.

2023 Preprints.org 4 citations
Article Tier 2

Perspectives on sustainable plastic treatment: A shift from linear to circular economy

This review examines emerging technologies for converting plastic waste into useful chemicals and fuels, including methods like pyrolysis, photocatalysis, and electrocatalysis. Researchers highlight how these approaches could shift plastic management from a throw-away model to a circular economy where waste becomes a resource. The study identifies remaining knowledge gaps and proposes future research directions for sustainable plastic treatment.

2024 TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry 32 citations
Article Tier 2

Chemical Recycling of Plastics by Microwave‐Assisted High‐Temperature Pyrolysis

Researchers developed a microwave-assisted high-temperature pyrolysis method that continuously breaks down mixed plastic waste and plant oil into useful chemicals like ethylene and propylene. This chemical recycling approach could help divert plastic waste from the environment while producing renewable building blocks for new materials.

2020 Global Challenges 51 citations
Article Tier 2

Perspectives on Thermochemical Recycling of End-of-Life Plastic Wastes to Alternative Fuels

This review examined thermochemical recycling technologies including pyrolysis, liquefaction, and gasification for converting plastic waste into clean fuels, discussing operating principles, barriers, and the potential for co-processing plastics with biomass.

2023 Materials 36 citations
Article Tier 2

Review and Design Overview of Plastic Waste-to-Pyrolysis Oil Conversion with Implications on the Energy Transition

This review analyzes the process of converting plastic waste into usable oil through pyrolysis, a thermal breakdown process conducted without oxygen. Researchers found that plastic waste has energy content comparable to conventional fuel oil, making pyrolysis an attractive waste-management and energy-recovery option. The study discusses the technical design considerations and suggests that scaling up this technology could contribute to both reducing plastic pollution and supporting the energy transition.

2023 Journal of Energy 75 citations
Article Tier 2

Upcycling of waste plastics: strategies, status-quo, and prospects

This review examines strategies for upcycling waste plastics into valuable products as an alternative to landfilling and incineration, which generate microplastics and carbon emissions respectively. Researchers survey chemical recycling methods including pyrolysis, gasification, and catalytic processes that can convert common plastics like PET, polyethylene, and polystyrene into fuels, chemicals, and new materials. The study highlights the urgent need for more effective recycling technologies to address the growing gap between plastic production and waste management capacity.

2024 Chinese Science Bulletin (Chinese Version) 3 citations
Article Tier 2

Beyond Mechanical Recycling: Giving New Life to Plastic Waste

This review examines chemical recycling processes — including pyrolysis, solvolysis, and gasification — as alternatives to mechanical recycling for plastic waste, comparing their technical readiness, environmental performance via life-cycle analysis, and commercial development status.

2020 Angewandte Chemie International Edition 1657 citations
Article Tier 2

Reimagining plastics waste as energy solutions: challenges and opportunities

This review examines the potential of converting plastic waste into energy through waste-to-energy and waste-to-fuel technologies, particularly in developing nations where recycling infrastructure is limited. Researchers assessed various conversion methods including pyrolysis and gasification, evaluating their efficiency and environmental trade-offs. The study emphasizes that energy recovery from plastic waste could help address both the growing plastic pollution crisis and energy needs in underserved regions.

2024 npj Materials Sustainability 26 citations
Article Tier 2

Light-driven polymer recycling to monomers and small molecules

Researchers reviewed how sunlight can be harnessed to chemically break down plastic waste into reusable molecules, offering a lower-energy alternative to heat-based recycling methods like pyrolysis. While still limited to certain plastic types, light-driven recycling shows promise for converting hard-to-recycle plastics into valuable chemical building blocks.

2024 Nature Communications 76 citations
Article Tier 2

Process Optimization of Solvents Assisted Polyethylene Waste Recycling

Researchers optimized solvent-based chemical recycling of polyethylene plastic waste to recover high-quality recycled material. The study demonstrates that chemical recycling can be tuned to maximize yield and quality, offering a scalable alternative to mechanical recycling that degrades plastic properties over time.

2023 FUDMA Journal of Sciences 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Recovery of plastic waste through its thermochemical degradation: a review

This review examines pyrolysis as a promising technology for recovering valuable chemical compounds from plastic waste, which reached approximately 368 million tons of global production in 2020 alone. Researchers discuss how thermal and catalytic degradation can convert different types of thermoplastics into high-energy-value products. The study also highlights the environmental and health impacts of plastic accumulation, including the effects of microplastic consumption on human and animal health.

2023 Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 11 citations
Article Tier 2

Research progress on chemical depolymerization and upcycling of PET waste plastics

This review examines recent advances in chemical methods for breaking down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste plastics into useful raw materials. Researchers surveyed techniques including glycolysis, methanolysis, hydrolysis, and aminolysis that can convert PET back into monomers for reuse. The study highlights chemical depolymerization as a promising approach to reduce plastic pollution while recovering valuable materials from waste.

2025 Chinese Science Bulletin (Chinese Version) 1 citations
Article Tier 2

Precise activation of C–C bonds for recycling and upcycling of plastics

This perspective examines strategies for recycling and upcycling polyolefin plastics by precisely activating and cleaving the inert carbon-carbon bonds in plastic waste. Researchers surveyed catalytic approaches from related chemistry fields, including lignin degradation and alkane dehydrogenation, that could inspire new methods for breaking down plastics. The study highlights cross-disciplinary opportunities for developing more effective catalytic technologies to address the growing plastic waste crisis.

2023 Chemical Science 56 citations
Article Tier 2

Emerging Technologies for Waste Plastic Treatment

This review surveyed emerging technologies for waste plastic treatment including chemical recycling, pyrolysis, biodegradation, and catalytic conversion, evaluating their potential to address the growing plastic pollution crisis more effectively than conventional methods.

2023 ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 46 citations
Article Tier 2

Thermochemical and chemo-biological molecular recycling of plastic waste and plastic-biomass waste mixtures: an updated review

This review covers thermochemical and chemo-biological approaches to recycling plastic waste and plastic-biomass waste mixtures into valuable building block molecules. The study highlights that while thermochemical and bioprocessing methods show promise, the chemo-enzymatic treatment of mixed plastic-biomass waste streams remains an open challenge due to their diverse composition.

2025 RSC Sustainability 6 citations
Article Tier 2

Are Reliable and Emerging Technologies Available for Plastic Recycling in a Circular Economy?

This review examines the current landscape of plastic recycling technologies -- including mechanical, thermal, chemical, and biological depolymerization methods such as pyrolysis -- evaluating their readiness for circular economy integration. It concludes that while recycling rates remain below 10% globally, emerging technologies offer pathways toward closed-loop plastic supply chains, though full-scale implementation requires further development and performance assessment.

2022 IntechOpen eBooks 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Approaches for Management and Valorization of Non-Homogeneous, Non-Recyclable Plastic Waste

This review examined management and valorization strategies for non-homogeneous, non-recyclable plastic waste, evaluating chemical recycling, energy recovery, and upcycling approaches as pathways to reduce environmental plastic accumulation and recover value from difficult-to-process waste streams.

2022 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 28 citations