bonds of polyethylene tagged posts

Scientists have come up with a way to turn the most common form of plastic into liquid fuel.

A new way of recycling millions of tons of plastic garbage into liquid fuel has been devised by researchers from the University of California, Irvine and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC) in China. “Synthetic plastics are a fundamental part of modern life, but our use of them in large volume has created serious environmental problems,” said UCI chemist Zhibin Guan. “Our goal through this research was to address the issue of plastic pollution as well as achieving a beneficial outcome of creating a new source of liquid fuel.”

Guan and Zheng Huang, his collaborator at SIOC et al have figured out how to break down the strong bonds of polyethylene, the most common commercially available...