New research reveals a scalable, sustainable way to turn common packaging waste into viable, clean-burning jet fuel.
Researchers from Nanjing Forestry University and Tsinghua University have reportedly developed a way of turning plastic waste into something close to jet fuel . Similar processes have been done before, but this new process is cheaper, more efficient, and requires lower temperatures and pressures.
It can also, the team claims, run continuously like previous attempts. In their study published in, this new process breaks down plastic at high temperatures in the presence of hydrogen.
“Our group has approached plastic hydrogenolysis from the catalyst perspective for several years, right as the field entered the era of single atomic site catalysts,” Professors Yadong Li and Dingsheng Wang, co-senior authors of the paper, told “The problem that kept pulling us back was selectivity; conventional plastic hydrogenation tends to give a broad, hard-to-control product distribution. We wanted to know whether designing the active center at the atomic scale could finally give us a handle on it,” they added.
This is significant, as normally, when you melt plastic, you end up with a kind of soup of gases, wax, oil, char, tar, and light hydrocarbons. Any kind of useful fuel is usually only a very small amount. To this end, the team decided to set out to find a path to steer the plastic breakdown process towards the exact molecules wanted.
As the team explains, the new process is two-step, with the first, calledThis cracks long plastic chains into smaller hydrocarbon chunks. The second stage is the clever bit where these chunks are then used to build “fragments” of jet fuel. , the products from the first step are passed over special catalysts at 320°F to make useful molecules like cycloalkanes, dense hydrocarbons, jet-fuel-range molecules.
“After screening several catalysts, we found that isolated Ru sites on a CoAl oxide can hydrogenate styrene to ethylcyclohexane at near-ambient pressure,” explained Li and Wang. “Polystyrene itself pyrolyzes into monomer and oligomer intermediates that then undergo efficient hydrogenolysis on these Ru sites. What surprised us was that this tandem route delivered a plastic-derived jet fuel with genuinely attractive fuel properties and process economics,” they added.
Polystyrene is an interesting choice as it is a very common waste product from things like packaging and disposable items like cups. It also breaks down relatively cleanly when heated.
“Compared with the traditional high-pressure, batch-reactor route, a tandem plug-flow reactor paired with efficient atomically dispersed Ru sites is a meaningful alternative,” Li and Wang added. “We also tested scale-up: we prepared and evaluated the catalyst at the gram scale, and both the catalyst and the ambient hydrogenation step scale up well. A techno-economic analysis put the competitive minimum selling price at US$1.0–1.8 per kilogram, a genuinely competitive figure,” they explain.
The process is interesting and promising, but it is yet to be seen if it can scale outside of the laboratory. That said, this is a potentially “We plan to keep optimizing this route within our existing life cycle and techno-economic framework, focusing on how the catalyst shapes the whole process and pushing toward even more efficient Ru single atomic sites catalysts,” added Li and Wang.
“We also want to preserve that activity and structural stability as we scale catalyst preparation up . On the process side, we’ll work on a continuous solid-feeding system to improve the current workflow,” they said. Christopher graduated from Cardiff University in 2004 with a Masters Degree in Geology. Since then, he has worked exclusively within the Built Environment, Occupational Health and Safety and Environmental Consultancy industries.
He is a qualified and accredited Energy Consultant, Green Deal Assessor and Practitioner member of IEMA. Chris’s main interests range from Science and Engineering, Military and Ancient History to Politics and Philosophy.
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