Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,
I am doing an engineering project on thermal depolymerization of plastics. I have hit a road block with finding sources of information while I'm doing my background research on the conditions needed for thermal depolymerization to occur with different types of plastic. It would be a big help if anyone knows any sources of information on the subject. Thanks.

Hi starkpr,

Welcome to the forum. Your project sounds really interesting! I poked around a little and have some suggestions for search terms.

Thermal depolymerization seems to include processes applied to plastics as well as to other polymers that are not plastics (lots of organic material -- proteins and DNA are polymers). So that's probably turning up some irrelevant info, right? Searching for pyrolysis plastic recycle yielded this page as a search result, which is a really nice overview and has links to some more formal sources:

http://www.lotfi.net/recycle/plastic.html

This page suggests that feedstock recycling could be a useful term, as well as catalytic pyrolysis if you want to include processes involving a catalyst (a molecule that makes a reaction go faster but does not actually react with anything). There are some details about specific approaches for different kinds of polymers:

http://www.americanchemistry.com/plasti ... 3&DID=6005

And here's a company that does catalytic pyrolysis: http://www.polymerenergy.com/

You could also try combining the above search terms with names of different types of plastic that you're interested in.

Hope that helps!

Amanda

Thanks.