The Digest’s 2024 Multi-Slide Guide to conversion of plastic-derived intermediates to new monomers

The Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment (BOTTLE) consortium is developing new chemical upcycling strategies for today’s plastics and redesigning tomorrow’s plastics to be recyclable-by-design. BOTTLE conducts high-impact research and development to deliver scalable technologies that enable cost-effective recycling, upcycling, and increased energy efficiency for plastics.

Under the BOTTLE research framework, the consortium is working to deconstruct waste plastics with catalysis and use chemical and biological transformations to upcycle the resulting intermediates to produce recyclable by design polymers. A new project within the consortium looked at Upcycling is a “bridging task” in BOTTLE, with work focused on conversion of plastics-derived intermediates to synthesize monomers for recyclable-by-design polymers. Adam Guss, Oak Ridge National Laboratory gave this presentation on the project at DOE Project Peer Review.