Plastic recycling
Simulation studies of the mechanisms behind pulsed thermal depolymerization of commodity plastics.
Recent experimental work has shown that pulsed, electrified “spatiotemporal heating” of a porous carbon bed can rapidly depolymerize commodity plastics such as polypropylene and PET back into their constituent monomers — reaching peak temperatures of roughly 600°C for as little as 0.11 seconds before cooling, and recovering monomer yields of around 36% (polypropylene) and 43% (PET) (Nature, 2023).
Our group’s contribution is computational: we use molecular simulations to study the thermal and chemical mechanisms behind this kind of rapid, localized heating-driven depolymerization — why brief high-temperature pulses favor monomer recovery over unwanted side reactions — to help guide the rational design of future plastic-recycling processes. We do not build or run the experimental reactors ourselves; our work is simulation-based.