The resilience that makes polyethylene useful makes the plastic hard to get rid of. But there’s a new way to recycle it
) both possess what is called a double bond between two of their carbon atoms. It is this that allows them to polymerise. A polymer forms when these double bonds partially open. That creates what are known as free valences, which allow the molecule to react with other things. If the other things are similar molecules with similar free valences, the result is a dimer, which can then go on to form a trimer, a tetramer and so on.
Mr Conk and his compadres have worked out how to reverse this in a way they hope might be industrialised. The trick is first to pepper a polyethylene molecule with double bonds by removing hydrogen atoms from pairs of adjacent carbon atoms using appropriate catalysts. Other catalysts then cut the polymer next to these new bonds and shuffle them, in a process called isomerisation, one link up the new, shortened chains.
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