Plastic bags, cutting boards, and many other everyday products are made from a plastic that is notoriously difficult to reuse once it becomes waste. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratoryhave now found a way to break down this plastic and turn it into gasoline-like and diesel-like fuels using a relatively simple mixture of heated salts.
The plastic is polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics in the world. In laboratory experiments, the new process converted it at temperatures below 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit), far cooler than many conventional methods, and produced a gasoline yield of about 60%.
The method also avoided several ingredients commonly needed to turn plastic into fuel. It did not require expensive precious metal catalysts, organic solvents, or an outside supply of hydrogen.