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New process vaporizes plastic bags and bottles, yielding gases to make new, recycled plastics
A new chemical process can essentially vaporize plastics that dominate the waste stream today and turn them into hydrocarbon building blocks for new plastics.
The catalytic process, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, works equally well with the two dominant types of post-consumer plastic waste: polyethylene, the component of most single-use plastic bags; and polypropylene, the stuff of hard plastics, from microwavable dishes to luggage. It also efficiently degrades a mix of these types of plastics.
The process, if scaled up, could help bring about a circular economy for many throwaway plastics, with the plastic waste converted back into the monomers used to make polymers, thereby reducing the fossil fuels used to make new plastics. Clear plastic water bottles made of polyethylene tetraphthalate (PET), a polyester, were designed in the 1980s to be recycled this way. But the volume of polyester plastics is minuscule compared to that of polyethylene and polypropylene plastics, referred to as polyolefins.
Celadyne Secures $4.5 Million to Accelerate Industrial Decarbonization with Durable Fuel Cells
Celadyne, the decarbonization and hydrogen solution company, announced that they have raised $4.5M in seed investment funding. The round was co-led by Maniv and Dynamo Ventures, with major participation from EPS Ventures.
Specifically, Celadyne’s materials and technologies replace the proton exchange membrane to create fuel cells that are more durable, and electrolyzers that are more compact and efficient. This newfound durability allows fuel cells to be utilized as an environmentally-friendlier alternative to diesel engines, and makes electrolyzers that produce low cost green hydrogen as fuel.