A research team led by Guoliang “Greg” Liu, associate professor of chemistry in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, is working to expand the frontiers of plastic recycling. Polystyrene is one such challenging material. Best known as a major component in Styrofoam, polystyrene is widely used but rarely recycled. Many municipal recycling facilities instruct residents (including those in Blacksburg) not to put polystyrene in their home recycling bins.
Currently, the main method for recycling polystyrene yields a product that is often too low-quality to make the process economically viable. In other words, if a recycling plant tries to recycle polystyrene on a large scale, it will either need a financial boost, such as a government subsidy, or the operation risks running out of money and shutting down.
One solution to this problem is to improve the recycling process so that it becomes economically viable, or even better, economically attractive. With his experience in polymer chemistry and as an affiliate of the Macromolecules Innovation Institute, this is exactly what Liu was able to guide his team to do. In a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team presents a new method for recycling — or perhaps more accurately, “upcycling” — polystyrene.