courtesy of NREL
About the Seminar
Recent progress in plastics recycling and redesign
Plastics have enabled many aspects of modern life, but their primary production from fossil carbon combined with end-of-life mismanagement is contributing to a global-scale pollution crisis. Our group along with multiple collaborators are working to develop new solutions for recycling of today’s plastics and to redesign tomorrow’s plastics to be both bio-derivable and inherently circular. This talk will review several recent efforts to that end, including new strategies for the development of plastics chemical and enzymatic recycling and plastics redesign. Moreover, the use of process modeling, techno-economic analysis, and life cycle assessment will be highlighted as important tools to be used alongside experimental research to help identify impactful opportunities for innovation.
About the Speaker
Gregg T. Beckham is a Senior Research Fellow and Group Leader at NREL. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT. He works with an interdisciplinary team at NREL on the development of sustainable processes and products in the areas of biomass conversion and plastics recycling and redesign.