2022 Annual Meeting
Upcycling of Polystyrene Waste Via Organo-Catalyzed Synthesis
One of the most pressing environmental issues of the modern age is plastic pollution. Most polymeric plastic waste (PPW) is not recycled, and the plastic that is recycled is done so using processes that are neither energy nor economically efficient. An alternative to recycling PPW would be upcycling, which is the process of converting PPW to a more valuable material with new properties by changing the functional groups attached to the molecule while maintaining the polymeric backbone. In this project, we focused on aromatic polymers, specifically polystyrene, because the aromatic group allows for easier addition of a sulfonate group, which can act as a lynchpin. This process is inspired by late-stage functionalization, which is used in the pharmaceutical industry. The sulfonated polystyrene acts as a handle to attach new functional groups onto using an organo-catalyzed synthesis reaction, using N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) as the catalyst. Through multiple trials with this process, we have been able to prove that it will work on a polymer chain; however, we have only achieved low degrees of functionalization. Moving forward, the process needs to be optimized using high throughput screening to achieve a higher degree of functionalization. Once this is achieved, this method of upcycling PPW could become a viable alternative to recycling.