Depolymerization of polyolefins for biological conversion
| DWPI Title: Depolymerizing polyolefin for bioconversion through sulfonation followed by a bond cleavage reaction, involves contacting polyolefin with sulfonating agent in absence of organic solvent and contacting metal catalyst and oxidant with the sulfonated polyolefin |
| Abstract: A method for depolymerizing polyolefins. The method includes a sulfonation step including contacting a polyolefin with a sulfonating agent in the absence of an organic solvent to provide a sulfonated polyolefin and a bond cleavage step including contacting a metal catalyst and an oxidant with the sulfonated polyolefin. A carbon-carbon bond of the sulfonated polyolefin is cleaved to provide a bioavailable carbon product wherein the bioavailable carbon product is a carbon source for microbial growth. |
| Use: Method for depolymerizing polyolefin for bioconversion through sulfonation followed by a bond cleavage reaction. |
| Advantage: The method efficiently and cost-effectively cleaves carbon-carbon bond to provide biologically available product, provides biologically available carbon material, such as low molecular weight organic compound of 100-1000g/mol, converts less than 60% of the total carbon in the polyolefin into carbon dioxide, provides efficient depolymerization of the polyolefin where the total mass of the bioavailable carbon product include 20-80 wt.% of total carbon contained in the polyolefin starting material, and depolymerizes polyolefin efficiently and economically by sequential sulfonation and bond cleavage. |
| Novelty: Depolymerizing polyolefins involves (a) performing a sulfonation step by contacting a polyolefin with a sulfonating agent in the absence of an organic solvent to provide a sulfonated polyolefin and a reaction mixture; and (b) performing a bond cleavage step by contacting a metal catalyst and an oxidant with the sulfonated polyolefin, where carbon-carbon bond of the sulfonated polyolefin is cleaved to provide a bioavailable carbon product, and the bioavailable carbon product is a carbon source for microbial growth, where metal catalyst is added to an aqueous dispersion of the sulfonated polyolefin to provide a metal-loaded sulfonated polyolefin, and metal-loaded sulfonated polyolefin is isolated by filtration, rinsed with water to remove excess metal catalyst. |
| Filed: 8/8/2023 |
| Application Number: US18231543A |
| Tech ID: SD 16166.1 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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