Thermal Cracking of Plastics Research

The interdisciplinary focus in Professor Butcher's group (Organic Chemistry) involves the use of a copper catalyst in thermal cracking of plastics, including polyethylene (HDPE) and polystyrene. The process involves an unidentified catalyst on the surface of the copper, and it efficiently cracks polyethyene to a mixture of alkenes and alkanes in at least 85% yield. The mixture of products obtained is characterized by using GCMS, a hyphenated technique in which gas chromatography is used to separate the components and mass spectrometry is used to detect them. The mass spectra are then classified by using chemometrics techniques. This involves artificial intelligence programs developed by Peter Harrington (Analytical Chemistry) and members of his group. The essential problems remaining are to identify the catalyst; characterize it by using surface analytical techniques (in collaboration with Martin Kordesch in Physics); discover how it works; and design improved catalysts that work more efficiently so it can be used on an industrial scale (in collaboration with Kendree Sampson in Chemical Engineering). It is a problem that spans disciplines and crosses traditional barriers to include fields of study in chemistry, physics and engineering. Associated Faculty: Butcher, Kordesch