PRUDESIME
Project: Polymer recycling using deep eutectic solvents: integrating molecular modelling and experiments
Collaborating Departments: Department of Chemical Engineering (Imperial); TUM School of Life Sciences (TUM)
Efficient and sustainable recycling of plastic polymers is essential to mitigate both plastic pollution and thecarbon footprint of plastic production. The overarching aims of this project are to develop new data,knowledge, models and design tools to facilitate the development of chemical recycling processes of plastics in order to mitigate the pollution currently arising from plastic use. We will treat solvent-based polymer recycling processes as integrated systems, focusing on overall performance while optimising variables across multiple scales, from molecular (solvent) to process (conditions, equipment sizing). Key performance indicators will include technical feasibility, economic, environmental and health and safety metrics. We will focus on the class of highly tuneable green deep eutectic solvents (DES) that are tailormade for the specific recycled polymer and specific recycling task, namely to dissolve a polymer out of a polymer mixture. By combining the strengths of the Imperial and TUM groups, we will develop predictive models of the thermodynamic behaviour of DES + polymer mixtures and propose a computer-aided molecular design (CAMD) platform to identify promising DESs for a specific task. We will measure dissolution rate data in a high-throughput setup, use it to construct a data-driven model of solvent effects on polymer dissolution, and integrate the model into the CAMD framework for system-wide optimisation. The approach will be demonstrated by focusing on polyethylene (PE) and polystyrene (PS) as model polymers.
Team
Principal Investigator (Imperial)
Prof. Dr. Claire S. Adjiman
Professor of Chemical Engineering | Imperial
Principal Investigator (TUM)
Prof. Dr. Mirjana Minceva
Professor of Biothermodynamics
Doctoral Candidate (Imperial)
Riccardo Standish
Doctoral Candidate (TUM)
Jian Yin