Fighting Microplastics for a Cleaner Future

Dr. Manish Shetty is working to break down microplastics to create usable fuel.
November 6, 2024 By Raven Wuebker

Microplastics, plastics smaller than 5 millimeters, are littered across the world, contributing to global warming, disrupting food chains, and harming ecosystems with toxic chemicals. This is why Dr. Manish Shetty is working to break down plastics before they can get into the environment.

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Shetty’s research uses solvents in low amounts that also act as hydrogen sources to break down a specific class of plastics called condensation polymers, which include polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, packaging, textiles, and 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 were able to design catalysts that can harness the stored hydrogen after the breakdown of these condensation polymers, as outlined in Shetty’s recent paper published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

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