Catalytic hydrocracking and hydrogenolysis of PE into alkanes

Hydrogenolysis and hydrocracking [1] are attractive polymer upcycling methods to produce low molecular weight liquid hydrocarbons with narrow molecular weight distributions under relatively mild conditions. In this project, we aim to develop heterogeneous catalyst materials to selectively convert waste PE/PP towards a well-defined mixture of saturated short-medium hydrocarbons (e.g., C6-C18).

To acquire the necessary insights into the mechanism of plastics conversion, we will also employ a wide variety of spectroscopy methods [2] to study catalyst materials for PE/PP conversion, including vibrational spectroscopy (UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopy and XPS), and X-ray spectroscopy (e.g., X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy), as well as microscopy methods (e.g., scanning and transmission electron spectroscopy).