Poly – Di – Ketoenamine Plastic | Burning Issues | PDF Download

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

•  The scientists have created a next-generation plastic that can be fully recycled into new materials of any colour, shape, or form, without loss of performance or quality.

POLY-DI-KETOENAMINE (PDK)

• The monomers of PDK plastic could be recovered and freed from any compounded additives by placing the material in a highly acidic solution.
• It helps to break the bonds between the monomers and separate them from chemical additives.
• The recovered PDK monomers can be remade into polymers, and those recycled polymers can form new plastic materials without inheriting the colour or other features of the original material.
• They could also upcycle the plastic by adding additional features, such as flexibility.
• A team of researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Berkeley National Laboratory has designed a recyclable plastic called PDK.

BASICS

• Most plastics are made of polymers, chains of hydrogen and carbon which are chiefly derived from petroleum products like crude oil.
• As the researchers noted in a press release, the traditional method of making plastic involves adding chemicals that stick to the monomers and are hard to remove during the recycling process. As a result, bits of plastics with different chemical compositions get all mixed up, and it’s tough to know what sort of a plastic the recycling process will ultimately spit out.
• Humans produce 300 million tons of plastic waste every year – which is roughly equivalent to the combined weight of all humans living right now.

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