Unfortunately, improved plastics recycling faces many challenges. Mechanical recycling, the current standard, is ineffective for most plastics as it often results in irreversible molecular weight loss which in turn degrades mechanical properties. Additionally, unknown additive composition limits the re-use of mechanical recyclate in many applications. Thus, chemical depolymerization or additive separation methods are needed for highly contaminated, colored, and mixed-plastic resins. While chemical recycling methods can often address multiple waste streams, it is often energy intensive to produce small molecules of inherently lower value than the plastic feed. Solvent purification technologies, while promising, use high loadings of toxic solvents to dissolve polymers and remove contaminants. To achieve our sustainability goals, robust new technologies are needed that are responsive both to plastic mixtures and their additives while maintaining molecular integrity.
An unconventional avenue for success lies in a previously overlooked regime of swelling in polymer melts. Using solubility models, we have uncovered pathways for green solvent swelling of many common polymers. These swelling techniques require less energy and carbon intensity than traditional processes and have the advantage of maintaining the polymeric features to enable circular reuse without additional repolymerization or solvent removal steps. While the initial goal of this research was to purify and blend co-mingled polyolefins [1], this approach has been used for separating intimately blended textiles into usable components [2] and for processing high performance composites [3].
*Lead inventor
Research Interests
As a recent graduate with my PhD in chemical engineering, I am seeking a full-time position in industrial or government R&D. My pervious research experience has focused on the thermodynamic behavior of polymers, lending me a strong theoretical and practical background on polymer physics and structure-property relationships. I am interested in pursuing research to leverage these skills in any range of industries such as polymer synthesis, composite materials, fibers and textiles, microplastics remediation, or coatings and formulations. As an enthusiastic learner and researcher, I am not bound by any particular application, instead I am interested in developing creative solutions for complex industrial R&D problems whether at low TRL levels or up to prototyping and manufacturing. Two areas of intrigue for me are synthesizing high-performance composite materials to meet application and cost requirements and developing replacement materials to phase out toxic chemicals such as PFAS.