Chemical Recycling – Upcycling of Polystyrene to Small Molecules (Benzoic Acid) Reported

The abstract of a March 23, 2022 Journal of the American Chemical Society article https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.2c01411 by researchers with US Cornell University reports that “… Chemical upcycling of polystyrene into targeted small molecules is desirable to reduce plastic pollution. Herein, we report the upcycling of polystyrene to benzoyl products, primarily benzoic acid, using a catalyst-controlled photooxidative degradation method ... Commercial polystyrene degrades efficiently in our method, showing the compatibility of our system with polymer fillers. Finally, we demonstrated the potential of scaling up our approach in a photoflow process to convert gram quantities of PS to benzoic acid …” #PlasticWaste #SingleUsePlastic #ChemicalRecycling #Recycling @J_A_C_S @CornellChem