New technique can turn quarter of the world's plastic waste into clean fuel

Plastic is everywhere you look, which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t choking our oceans ,  poisoning our wildlife , and potentially  giving our cows a plastic-sniffing habit .

Just 9 percent of the 8.3 billion+ tons of plastic produced in the last six decades has been recycled,  according to  a United Nations report. Over eight million tons of plastic find their way into our rivers and oceans each year, with devastating short- and long-term effects on ecosystem health.

Researchers at Purdue University gave this a good think before engineering a whole new chemical process to turn waste plastic into something useful. What they ended up with was better than they imagined: clean fuel.

The chemical process works on a category of plastic waste called polyolefin, which is the kind used to make grocery bags, toys, and cling film. These account for nearly 23 percent of all the world’s plastic waste, according to the study described in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.

The process, known as ‘hydrothermal liquefaction’, uses melting-hot temperatures to turn pellets of polyolefin into plastic goo. This liquid is then dissolved in super-heated water, which gives out a few by-products: oil, gas, or solvents.

The oil (gasoline-like) released in the process is the fuel that can be used to power vehicles that already ply on our roads today. This polyolefin waste-derived clean fuel can satisfy 4 percent of the demand for gasoline or diesel fuel each year, according to a press release .

“Our strategy is to create a driving force for recycling by converting polyolefin waste into a wide range of valuable products, including polymers, naphtha (a mixture of hydrocarbons), or clean fuels,” Linda Wang, lead researcher of the study at Purdue University, said in the release .

The technology has the potential to breathe new life into the recycling industry and shrink the world’s piling plastic waste significantly.