LAUREL · Challenging catalytic routes of hydrogen production from waste plastics
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-10-01 → 2024-09-30
- EU contribution
- €165,313
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Challenging catalytic routes of hydrogen production from waste plastics
Plastic pollution is a global issue with significant environmental and health risks. This problem is exacerbated by the lack of effective recovery and recycling systems, leading to uncontrolled disposal and landfill use for both recyclable and non-recyclable plastics. Recyclable plastics like polyethylene terephthalate (PET) face recycling challenges due to inadequate infrastructure and high costs; compostable plastics helps to some extent, but composting results in a loss of material resources, which contradicts the principles of a circular economy; and their valorization has revealed high significant production of CO2 emissions. There is a clear need for eco-friendly methods to remove plastics and reduce landfill waste. In this context, the LAUREL project proposed exploring aqueous phase reforming (APR) of plastics as an alternative method to eliminate and valorize to H2 under mild conditions. However, applying APR to plastic waste is challenging because plastics typically have low oxygen content, and the optimal C/O ratio for APR is around 1. Therefore, a pretreatment of soft photooxidation (PhOx) of the plastics was planned, using layered double hydroxides (LDH), and achieving degradation products that could be easily reformed. Thus, the objectives were design and developing LDH materials to use in both catalytic reactions, to identify the most active and understanding the catalytic mechanism. LDH and related materials were synthetized, used in PhOx/APR and studying their effects in the subsequent APR stage, which required catalysts based on precious metals. New LDH-based heterostructures were developed to create dual catalysts capable of catalyzing PhOx/APR. The study found that some plastics could be reformed directly in APR without pretreatment. Additionally, the role of LDH in the process was studied in depth, including the mechanism. PLA and PET were directly reformed. Differences in the products (yield and selectivity) were achieved after the PhOX/APR instead of direct APR. PP, PC and PS were still refractory to the PhOX/APR proccess.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Europe and the world are facing to the climate change emergency. To preserve the environment, the ambitious European Green Deal has in the agenda actions related to reducing air, water and soil pollution. In this regard, plastics represent a huge challenge because of they are pollutants that present a recalcitrant nature and consequently widespread and accumulation. Tackling this challenge requires the application of remediation processes beyond than recycle or thermal treatment. Aqueous phase reforming, a mild catalytic process, is here presented as an alternative to eliminate plastics at moderated temperatures and pressures and adding the additional benefit of the production of energetic vectors such as hydrogen or alkanes. To implement this process with high performance, low cost and energy efficiency, photo-oxidation reaction can be employed in a previous treatment. In both stage, the performance of the catalyst is a key aspect. In this context, the general objective of this project is to obtain heterostructured materials for application on complex catalytic process to achieve a clean conversion of plastics to hydrogen. With this aim, this project proposes the synthetic procedures and the physicochemical characterization of heterostructures composed by layered double hydroxides assembled with carbon materials, to get a library of materials with the catalytic properties demanded in photo-oxidation and aqueous phase reforming. The materials will be tested and optimized in the coupled processes over plastics in micronized size, from different nature and composition. The identification of the intermediates is a requirement to understand the mechanism and the catalytic route followed for the pollutants, the especial relevant to demonstrate the potential of this technology to remove and valorize plastics at large scale.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101064359
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e516ffd626&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5f9b285c7&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union