Sustainable transformation of plastic arenes to fine chemicals

Abstract

Plastics, synthetic or semisynthetic polymers are considered to have wide range of applications owing to their great adaptability, flexibility, long-durability, light-weight, low-cost, corrosion resistance and moisture resistance properties. Due to numerous commercial applications, the plastic production has been significantly increasing worldwide with each passing day creating a pervasive and near-unmanageable threat called ‘Plastic Pollution’ as most of the plastics ever made is no longer in use, instead get stagnant in landfill or get released into the environment. This plastic pollution has detrimental impacts in all three systems e.g., terrestrial, marine and atmosphere and it’s adversely effecting both Flora and Fauna of this world. Therefore, the main idea of our work is to convert the commercial plastic wastes into fine chemicals approaching through a sustainable pathway. We are mainly focusing on the plastics having an aromatic core and trying to regenerate the raw materials and some value-added products without involving any purification or separation in between rather making the whole conversion one-pot. Hopefully, our strategy of chemical recycling of plastics without using any toxic reagent or extreme harsh condition will lead us to synthesize some desirable new products and will make some contribution in saving the landfill space and preventing pollution.