Microplastics, defined as plastics smaller than 5 millimeters, are found throughout the planet, exacerbating global warming, interrupting food chains, and damaging ecosystems with harmful chemicals. This is why Dr. Manish Shetty from Texas A&M University is focused on deconstructing plastics before they can enter the environment.
By creating sustainable chemicals and enhancing waste management practices, we can make significant strides toward environmental sustainability. Dr. Shetty’s research aims to enable the use of green hydrogen for waste management, utilizing innovative catalysts.
His groundbreaking work focuses on utilizing limited amounts of solvents that also serve as hydrogen sources to dismantle a specific class of plastics known as condensation polymers. These include everyday items like polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, packaging materials, textiles, and components used in 3D printing.
“What we have done in this research is to break down condensation polymers to aromatic compounds that can be used as fuels,” Shetty said. “We use organic compounds called liquid organic hydrogen carriers to store hydrogen and use that hydrogen to break down the polymers.”
Shetty and his team have successfully developed innovative catalysts that effectively harness the hydrogen released during the breakdown of condensation polymers, as detailed in Shetty’s recent paper in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
The study demonstrates how catalytic surfaces interact with the hydrogen emitted by these organic carriers to convert PET into p-xylene, a compound suitable for fuels or chemicals. According to Shetty, this research not only provides a solution for waste management but is also vital for the sustainability of the chemical sector.
“We have developed a solution for sustainability and waste management on these catalysts,” Shetty said. “These organic molecules transport this hydrogen from where it’s generated to where it’s used for waste management, especially in an urban environment where we collect a lot of these wastes.”
This innovative research utilizes methanol to effectively break down PET into smaller, more manageable fragments while also harnessing an H2 source to transform PET into p-xylene—a promising chemical and potential fuel source.
According to the paper, Shetty envisions that the application of this research could revolutionize our economy, moving us away from our reliance on fossil fuels and paving the way for a more sustainable future.
“One of the things that might happen is, as hydrogen becomes more available, especially for green hydrogen, which is through water electrolysis, we need the hydrogen carriers as a transport vector,” Shetty said. “One such use would be waste management and valorization.”
Journal reference:
- Ryan Helmer, Siddhesh S. Borkar, Aojie Li, Fatima Mahnaz, Jenna Vito, Ashfaq Iftakher, Prof. M. M. Faruque Hasan, Prof. Srinivas Rangarajan, Prof. Manish Shetty. Tandem Methanolysis and Catalytic Transfer Hydrogenolysis of Polyethylene Terephthalate to p-Xylene Over Cu/ZnZrOx Catalysts. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2024; DOI: 10.1002/anie.202416384
