University team claims PVC recycling breakthrough

A paper available through Nature.com describes a newly developed recycling technique for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic scrap.

The paper’s four authors say the technique can be used to chemically recycle PVC medical tubing, or it can handle mixed plastic scrap that includes some PVC materials.

In the paper’s abstract, PVC is referred to as “an appealing target” for research as it is “the least recycled high-production-volume polymer due to its facile release of plasticizers and corrosive hydrogen chloride (HCl) gas.”

The researchers say those “same limitations become advantageous in a paired-electrolysis reaction in which HCl is intentionally generated from PVC to chlorinate arenes in an air- and moisture-tolerant process that is mediated by the plasticizer.”

“Overall, this method should inspire other strategies for repurposing waste PVC and related polymers using electrosynthetic reactions, including those that take advantage of existing polymer additives," the authors conclude in the abstract.

In a news report on the research, MLive notes Anne J. McNeil of the University of Michigan and former UM researcher Danielle Fagnani are among the co-authors of the paper. The website quotes Fagnani as saying, “PVC is the kind of plastic that no one wants to deal with because it has its own unique set of problems.”

“It’s a failure of humanity to have created these amazing materials which have improved our lives in many ways, but at the same time to be so shortsighted that we didn’t think about what to do with the waste," Fagnani adds.