04 Sep 2023 --- Researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), US, are repurposing plastics in a method that shortcuts conventional “dirty” processes for making surfactants while giving single-use plastics one more shot at usefulness. In a paper published in Chem, the scientists have reimagined the value of single-use plastics with improvements to an innovative process that can turn polyolefins, the most common type of polymer in single-use packaging, into valuable alkylaromatics – molecules that underlie surfactants, the main components of detergents and other useful chemicals. “If we make these surfactants from fossil fuels now, and you could make them from waste plastics, then you are not using fossil fuels to make surfactants anymore, and you’re getting another use out of the carbon that went into the plastics,” explains chemical engineering professor Susannah Scott, who holds UCSB’s Mellichamp chair in Sustainable Catalytic Processing.
