Invention Awards: January 2025

Friday, January 31, 2025

Ancient Greece and Rome’s Toxic Footprint Found in the Aegean

Ancient lead pollution in the Aegean Sea may have started 5,200 years ago — 1,200 years earlier than previously thought.

Researchers analyzed sediment cores from land and sea, linking lead levels to historical human activity. The study reveals that lead contamination surged around 2,150 years ago, coinciding with the Roman Empire’s expansion into Greece. As mining for precious metals intensified, lead seeped into the environment, marking the first known instance of marine lead pollution.

Ancient Lead Pollution: A New Timeline

Lead pollution in the Aegean Sea may have started around 5,200 years ago, according to a study published today (January 30) in Communications Earth & Environment. This discovery suggests that human-caused lead contamination began 1,200 years earlier than previously believed. The study also found that lead pollution increased significantly about 2,150 years ago, coinciding with the expansion of the Roman Empire in the region.

To investigate this, Andreas Koutsodendris and his team analyzed lead levels in marine sediment cores from across the Aegean Sea, as well as a sediment core from the Tenaghi Philippon peatland in northeastern Greece. They also examined pollen and spores in several samples, integrating this data with existing records to understand how social and cultural changes affected the region’s ecosystems over time.

A Shocking Discovery: The Earliest Lead Pollution Signal

The findings include the earliest recorded signal of probable human-caused lead pollution, occurring around 5,200 years ago in the Tenaghi Philippon core. This is approximately 1,200 years earlier than the previous earliest suspected lead pollution, recorded in cores from peatlands in the Balkan Peninsula.

The authors also suggest that a change in the vegetation record and an increase in the lead pollution signal around 2,150 years ago are likely linked to the expansion of the Roman Empire into Ancient Greece at that time. This period was marked by a significant increase in the mining of gold, silver, and other metals for use in currency and other items. The increase in the lead pollution signal includes the first presence of lead in marine sediment cores, which the authors suggest is the earliest recorded probable lead pollution in a marine environment.

Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Aegean Sea, environmental pollution, lead contamination, toxic footprint, archaeological evidence, climate history, historical pollution, marine sediments, metallurgy, ancient industry.

#ScienceFather#InventionsAwards#AncientGreece #AncientRome #AegeanSea #EnvironmentalHistory #ToxicFootprint #LeadPollution #Archaeology #HistoricalPollution #ClimateChange #MarineSediments #Metallurgy

Event Title : International Invention Awards

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Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Scientists Discover Bacteria That Eats “Forever Chemicals”

A University at Buffalo study reveals that a strain isolated from contaminated soil can break down the strong carbon-fluorine bonds in PFAS, including some of the shorter-chain PFAS left behind.

In the quest to take the “forever” out of “forever chemicals,” bacteria might be our ally.

While most PFAS remediation methods focus on capturing and containing these chemicals, certain microbes can actually dismantle the exceptionally strong chemical bonds that make PFAS so persistent in the environment.

A research team led by the University at Buffalo has discovered a strain of bacteria capable of breaking down and transforming at least three types of PFAS. Notably, this strain can also degrade some of the toxic byproducts produced during the breakdown process.

Their findings, published in Science of the Total Environment, reveal that the bacterium Labrys portucalensis F11 (F11) metabolized more than 90% of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) over 100 days. PFOS, one of the most prevalent and persistent PFAS compounds, was classified as hazardous by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022.

The F11 bacteria also broke down a substantial portion of two additional types of PFAS after 100 days: 58% of 5:3 fluorotelomer carboxylic acid and 21% of 6:2 fluorotelomer sulfonate.

“The bond between carbon and fluorine atoms in PFAS is very strong, so most microbes cannot use it as an energy source. The F11 bacterial strain developed the ability to chop away the fluorine and eat the carbon,” says the study’s corresponding author, Diana Aga, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Henry M. Woodburn Chair in the Department of Chemistry, within the UB College of Arts and Sciences, and director of the UB RENEW Institute.

Unlike many prior studies on PFAS-degrading bacteria, Aga’s study accounted for shorter-chain breakdown products — or metabolites. In some cases, F11 even removed fluorine from these metabolites or broke them down to minute, undetectable levels.

“Many previous studies have only reported the degradation of PFAS, but not the formation of metabolites. We not only accounted for PFAS byproducts but found some of them continued to be further degraded by the bacteria,” says the study’s first author, Mindula Wijayahena, a PhD student in Aga’s lab.

The work was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. Other collaborators include the Catholic University of Portugal, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Waters Corp.

Picky eaters learn to like PFAS

PFAS are a group of ubiquitous chemicals widely used since the 1950s in everything from nonstick pans to fire-fighting materials.

They’re far from the meal of choice for any bacterium, but some that live in contaminated soil have mutated to break down organic contaminants like PFAS so that they can use their carbon as an energy source.

“If bacteria survive in a harsh, polluted environment, it’s probably because they have adapted to use surrounding chemical pollutants as a food source so they don’t starve,” Aga says. “Through evolution, some bacteria can develop effective mechanisms to use chemical contaminants to help them grow.

The bacterial strain used in this study, F11, was isolated from the soil of a contaminated industrial site in Portugal and had previously demonstrated the ability to strip fluorine from pharmaceutical contaminants. However, it had never been tested on PFAS.

Collaborators from the Catholic University of Portugal placed F11 in sealed flasks with no carbon source aside from 10,000 micrograms per liter of PFAS. Following incubation periods of between 100 to 194 days, the samples were then shipped to UB, where analysis revealed that F11 had degraded some of the PFAS.

The elevated levels of fluoride ions detected in these samples indicated that F11 had detached the PFAS’ fluorine atoms so that the bacteria could metabolize the carbon atoms.

“The carbon-fluorine bond is what makes PFAS so difficult to break down, so to break them apart is a critical step. Crucially, F11 was not only chopping PFOS into smaller pieces, but also removing the fluorine from those smaller pieces,” Wijayahena says.

Some of the metabolites left behind still contained fluorine, but after being exposed to PFOS for 194 days, F11 had even removed fluorine from three PFOS metabolites.

“As a caveat, there could be other metabolites in these samples so miniscule that they elude current detection methods,” Aga says.

Making PFAS a desirable menu item

While UB researchers say their study is a good start, they caution that the F11 took 100 days to biodegrade a significant portion of the supplied PFAS, and there were no other carbon sources available for consumption.

The team now plans to research how to encourage F11 to consume PFAS faster, even when there are competing energy choices that could increase their growth rate.

“We want to investigate the impact of placing alternative carbon sources alongside the PFAS. However, if that carbon source is too abundant and easy to degrade, the bacteria may not need to touch the PFAS at all,” Aga says. “We need to give the F11 colonies enough food to grow, but not enough food that they lose the incentive to convert PFAS into a usable energy source.”

Eventually, F11 could be deployed in PFAS-contaminated water and soil. This might involve creating conditions to grow the strain within activated sludge at a wastewater treatment plant, or even injecting the bacteria directly into the soil or groundwater of a contaminated site, a process called bioaugmentation.

“In wastewater- activated sludge systems, you could accelerate the removal of undesired compounds by adding a specific strain to the existing bacterial consortium in the treatment plants,” Aga says. “Bioaugmentation is a promising method that has not yet been explored for PFAS remediation in the environment.”

Forever chemicals, PFAS, bacteria discovery, environmental cleanup, pollution solution, water contamination, biodegradation, sustainable science, toxic waste removal, scientific breakthrough

#ScienceFather#InventionAwards#ForeverChemicals #PFAS #EnvironmentalScience #Biodegradation #CleanWater #ToxicCleanup #EcoFriendly #SustainableFuture #ScienceNews #PollutionSolution

Event Title : International Invention Awards

Testing Thousands of Compounds Simultaneously to Uncover New Drugs and Tailored Treatments

Scientists have unveiled a groundbreaking method to test how thousands of active substances influence cellular metabolism simultaneously.

By using high-throughput metabolomics and mass spectrometry, they identified unexpected effects of existing medications, paving the way for repurposing drugs and accelerating drug discovery. This approach could one day align patient-specific metabolic data with tailored treatments.

Understanding Active Substances and Cell Metabolism

How do active substances affect metabolic processes in cells? Answering this question could unlock valuable insights for developing new medications. However, investigating how a library of compounds interacts with cellular metabolism has historically been a resource-intensive task.

Now, researchers from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel have introduced a groundbreaking method for testing the metabolic effects of thousands of substances simultaneously. Their findings, based on a technique called high-throughput metabolomics, were published today (January 28) in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Predicting Side Effects and Drug Interactions

“When we have a better understanding of exactly how active substances intervene in cell metabolism, the development of medication can be accelerated,” explains Professor Mattia Zampieri. “Our method provides additional characterization of the substances, from which we can infer possible side effects or interactions with other medications.”

The researchers, led by Dr. Laurentz Schuhknecht, lead author of the study, grew cells in thousands of little wells in cell culture plates. They then treated the cells in each well with one of over 1500 substances from a compound library, and used a method called mass spectrometry to measure how thousands of small biomolecules inside the cells (known as metabolites) change upon treatment.

This allowed the research team to gather data on the changes of over 2000 metabolic products in the cells for each active compound. They then compared these changes with those obtained from untreated cells via computer-aided analysis. This resulted in an overview of the effects on cell metabolism of each active substance, which gave them a very accurate picture of its respective mode of action.

Surprising Discoveries in Drug Mechanisms

“Commercially available drugs can influence cell metabolism much more than we had imagined,” says Zampieri, summing up the results of the experiments. Particularly of note were the previously unknown modes of action of common medications. For example, the team discovered that tiratricol, a drug for treating a rare condition involving the thyroid gland function, aside its primary mode of action also influences the production of certain nucleotides, the building blocks for DNA synthesis.

“This medication would therefore potentially be a good candidate for a new field of application: modulating nucleotide biosynthesis and hence being used for instance in cancer therapy to inhibit tumor growth,” says Schuhknecht.

Leveraging Data for AI-Driven Drug Design

Comprehensive data from high-throughput methods such as this, can help train artificial intelligence for designing new medications. “Our long-term vision is to match patient-specific metabolic profiles of a disease with the mode of metabolic interference of thousands of compound candidates to unravel the best medication able to revert the molecular changes induced by the disease,” says Zampieri.

In order to get closer to this vision, it is not only important to understand the action of the substances on metabolism, the pharmacologist emphasizes. It is equally important how the human body processes the active substances and thus how it changes their effect. The scientists are therefore conducting further research to examine the interaction between the body and active substances more closely.

High-throughput screening, drug discovery, precision medicine, compound libraries, pharmaceutical research, tailored treatments, biomedical innovation, AI in drug discovery, chemical screening, personalized medicine.

#ScienceFather#InventionsAwards#DrugDiscovery #PrecisionMedicine #HighThroughputScreening #PharmaceuticalResearch #TailoredTreatments #BiomedicalInnovation #AIinHealthcare #NewMedicines #ChemicalScreening #PersonalizedMedicine

Event Title : International Invention Awards

Monday, January 27, 2025

Physicists Found the Magic Number to Save Quantum Networks

Researchers at Northwestern have found a way to keep quantum networks functioning despite the inherent instability of quantum links.

By strategically adding links, they demonstrated that networks can be maintained with far fewer new connections than expected, offering a more efficient model for quantum communications.

Quantum Networks and Entangled Photons

Entangled photons have immense potential for quantum computing and communications, but they come with a significant challenge — once used, they vanish.

In a new study published on January 23 in Physical Review Letters, physicists at Northwestern University introduced a new approach to sustain communication in constantly changing and unpredictable quantum networks. Their research shows that by strategically rebuilding lost connections, the network can eventually reach a stable, though altered, state.

Balancing Quantum Network Connections

The key to maintaining a functioning quantum network lies in adding the right number of connections, according to the researchers. Adding too many connections can overwhelm resources, making the system inefficient, while adding too few can leave the network fragmented and unable to meet user demands.

These insights could pave the way for the development of optimized quantum networks, enabling ultra-fast computing and highly secure communications.

“Many researchers are putting significant efforts into building larger and better quantum communication networks around the globe,” said Northwestern’s István Kovács, the study’s senior author. “But, as soon as a quantum network is opened up to users, it burns down. It’s like crossing a bridge and then burning it down behind you. Without intervention, the network quickly dismantles. To tackle this problem, we developed a simple model of users. After each communication event, we added a fixed number of bridges, or links, between disconnected nodes. By adding a large enough number of links after each communication event, we maintained network connectivity.”

An expert in complex systems, Kovács is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The Challenge of Quantum Entanglement in Communications

Quantum networks work by harnessing quantum entanglement, a phenomenon in which two particles are linked, regardless of the distance between them. Xiangi Meng, an expert in quantum communication and one of the study’s first authors, describes entanglement as a “spooky” but effective resource. At the time of the research, Meng was a research associate in the Kovács group but now is an assistant professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

“Quantum entanglement is the spooky, space-time-defying correlation between quantum particles,” Meng said. “It’s a resource that allows quantum particles to talk to each other, so they can perform complex tasks together while ensuring no eavesdropper can intercept their messages.”

When two computers communicate using entangled links, however, the links involved in that communication disappear. The act of communication itself alters the quantum state of the link, making it unusable for further communications.

“In classical communications, the infrastructure has enough capacity to handle many, many messages,” Kovács said. “In a quantum network, each link can only send a single piece of information. Then it falls apart.”

Developing Sustainable Quantum Networks

To better understand how networks behave under constant change, Kovács and his team built a simplified model of users within a quantum network. First, the researchers enabled users to randomly select other users with whom to communicate. Then, they found the shortest, most efficient communication path between those users and removed all the links along that path. This created a “path percolation,” where the network gradually breaks down with each communication event.

After exploring this problem, Kovács and his team sought to offer a solution. Through modeling, they found the exact number of links to add after each communication event. That number resides at the critical boundary between maintaining the network and fracturing the network. Surprisingly, the team found the critical number is just the square root of the number of users. If there are 1 million users, for example, then 1,000 links need to be re-added for every 1 qubit of information sent through the network.

“It would be natural to expect that this number increases linearly with the number of users, or maybe even quadratically, as the number of user pairs that could communicate,” Kovács said. “We found the critical number actually is a very small fraction compared to the number of users. But, if you add fewer than that, the network will fall apart, and people cannot communicate.”

Kovács envisions this information potentially could help others design an optimized, robust quantum network that can tolerate failures. New links could be automatically added when other links disappear — creating a more resilient network.

“The classical internet was not built to be fully robust,” Kovács said. “It naturally emerged due to technological constraints and user behavior. It was not designed, it just happened. But now we can do better with the quantum internet. We can design it to ensure it reaches its full potential.”

Quantum networks, magic number, quantum computing, quantum physics, network stability, physicists discovery, quantum communication, quantum entanglement, technology breakthrough

#ScienceFather#InventionAwards#QuantumNetworks #MagicNumber #QuantumComputing #PhysicsBreakthrough #QuantumTechnology #QuantumCommunication #TechInnovation #QuantumEntanglement #FutureOfTech #PhysicsDiscovery

Event Title : International Invention Awards

Light-Speed Imaging: A Breakthrough in Edge Detection

Researchers from the University of Amsterdam’s Institute of Physics, led by Jorik van de Groep, have developed a groundbreaking method to detect image edges with exceptional speed and minimal energy consumption. Their findings were recently published in ACS Photonics.

Computing With Light

As the demand for computing power continues to grow, energy consumption has become a major concern. Traditional hardware struggles to keep up with increasing software demands, making energy-efficient alternatives a pressing need. In response, researchers have been exploring new computing methods that offer high-speed performance with lower energy requirements.

One promising approach is optical analog computing, a technique that uses light to perform mathematical operations before the image is even captured by a camera. Optical analog computing devices do not require electrical power, making them incredibly energy-efficient. Additionally, because these operations occur at the speed of light, the process is almost instantaneous.

This breakthrough could pave the way for more efficient and faster data processing solutions, offering a potential game-changer for industries reliant on high-speed imaging and analysis.

Breakthrough in Edge Detection

In their research, together with industrial partners WITec and SCIL Imprint Solutions, the physicists have focused on edge detection techniques, aimed at identifying edges in images – locations where a sudden change in brightness occurs, indicating the border of an object that is observed. Edge detection is one of the most crucial tasks in image processing with applications in e.g. autonomous vehicles. To perform the optical analog computing, the physicists used a simple and easy-to-fabricate stack of thin films.

The method turned out to work very well, being able to detect the edges of even very small objects, about 1 micrometer in size.

Bernardo Dias, first author of the publication, says: “The design of the layer stack is extremely simple compared to the complex optical coatings that pose as the state-of-the-art. Despite this, our device shows one of the largest numerical apertures to date, allowing us to perform edge detection on the smallest possible targets.”

Enhancing Microscopic Imaging

An additional benefit of the method is that it can work with a large number of light sources like lamps, LEDs, or lasers, facilitating its potential use in existing technology. The results demonstrate that these techniques can in particular be used for high-resolution microscopy. Since the device also highlights the edges of transparent objects which would be invisible to a conventional bright field microscope – think of cells – application in biological samples is also possible.

As a next step, the researchers aim to develop switchable devices for optical analog computing, where one can switch the mathematical operation on and off, or where the device can switch between different functions.

Light-speed imaging, Edge detection, Imaging technology, High-speed processing, Visual computing, Image analysis, Advanced optics, Real-time imaging, Technology breakthrough, Machine vision

#ScienceFather#InventionAwards#LightSpeedImaging #EdgeDetection #TechBreakthrough #ImageProcessing #AdvancedOptics #RealTimeImaging #MachineVision #Innovation #VisualComputing #ImagingTechnology

Event Title : International Invention Awards

Friday, January 24, 2025

Ultra-Slim Metamaterial Breakthrough Could Change How We Use Light

Researchers have developed a revolutionary ultra-thin metasurface that can generate circularly polarized light with remarkable efficiency.

By leveraging the unique properties of chirality and rotational symmetry, this breakthrough eliminates the need for bulky optical setups, enabling more compact and efficient optical devices. This innovation has far-reaching implications for fields such as medical imaging, communications, and quantum physics.

Advancing Optical Technology with Metasurfaces

Circularly polarized light, where electromagnetic waves spiral either clockwise or counterclockwise as they travel, is essential in many applications, including medical imaging and advanced communication technologies. However, producing this type of light typically requires large, complex optical systems that are difficult to integrate into compact devices.

To overcome this limitation, a research team from Singapore, led by Associate Professor Wu Lin of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), has developed a groundbreaking metasurface — an ultra-thin material with unique properties not found in nature. This innovation has the potential to replace traditional bulky optical setups. Their findings were published in Physical Review Letters in a paper titled “Enabling all-to-circular polarization up-conversion by nonlinear chiral metasurfaces with rotational symmetry.”

Chirality and Nonlinearity: Enhancing Light Manipulation

The team’s proposed metasurface exhibits chirality, which makes it different from materials used in traditional set-ups. Chirality of an object means that it cannot be superimposed onto its mirror image. Like our left and right hands, chiral objects exist in two distinct forms that are mirror images of each other. The key feature of chiral optical nanostructures, such as metasurfaces, is their remarkably different response to the left and right circular polarizations of light.

Assoc Prof Wu’s team has shown that a combination of two peculiar geometrical properties, namely, chirality and rotational symmetry, within a nonlinear metasurface enables an interesting mechanism of generating circularly polarized light from an arbitrary optical excitation.

Innovations in Frequency Conversion

The nonlinearity of the metasurface is essential in this transformation of light. A linear metasurface would filter the incoming light and allow only the specific polarization of the light to pass through. On the other hand, a nonlinear metasurface not only selects and amplifies a specific circular polarization but also converts it into circularly polarized light at an entirely different frequency.

For example, a nonlinear material can turn visible light into ultraviolet radiation, which is of a different frequency range. This frequency upconversion capability, combined with the inherent chirality of the metasurface, allows the metasurface to effectively produce circularly polarized light at specific frequency ranges.

Compact Design, Broad Applications

“All this happens within an exceptionally thin layer of just one micron,” said Assoc Prof Wu. This is a far cry from the typically bulky optical setups for creating circularly polarized light.

“In our design, we incorporate a twist between the periodically arranged elements within the layers of the metasurface, creating geometries that subtly mimic the threads on screws,” she continued, attributing the compactness of the proposed metasurface to a unique stacking strategy devised by her team.

Future Prospects and Interdisciplinary Research

Through mathematical elucidations, the team demonstrated that the stacking of layers leads to the chiral response of the metasurface. “Just two stacked layers can yield a maximally chiral response,” she added.

This opens doors to a wide range of exciting applications, holding immense potential for the future miniaturization of optical devices. This could also find applications in chiral sensing, circular dichroism spectroscopy of novel materials and biomolecules, which have far-reaching implications on fields as diverse as medicine and quantum physics.

“We envision that such metasurfaces can be used as compact sources of circularly polarized radiation emitting in hard-to-reach wavelength ranges,” Assoc Prof Wu said.

Bridging Design and Technology

The ingenuity of the metasurface’s design is also clear evidence of SUTD’s commitment to intersecting technology and design in research. In designing the metasurface, the team first had to make clear the mechanism for the upconversion of light into circularly polarized light. By then incorporating this technology into the design of the metasurface, the team effectively translated their theoretical understanding into a functional and compact device. This seamless use of design and technology is a hallmark of SUTD’s interdisciplinary approach to research.

Together with fellow SUTD colleague Professor Joel Yang and his team, Assoc Prof Wu’s team is now working to verify their work experimentally. “Our primary objective is to observe the effect of all-to-circular upconversion. We aim to ‘excite’ the structure with unpolarized light and achieve a nonlinear signal characterized by a high degree of circular polarization,” she said. “We are optimistic that this endeavor will contribute another significant piece of research to the portfolio of SUTD scientists.”

Ultra-slim metamaterial, Light manipulation, Optical technology, Metamaterial applications, Breakthrough innovation, Advanced photonics, Light control, Energy-efficient optics, Nanotechnology, Revolutionary materials

#ScienceFather#InventionAwards#Metamaterials #LightInnovation #Nanotechnology #Photonics #TechBreakthrough #RevolutionaryMaterials #FutureOfLight #EnergyEfficient #AdvancedOptics #ScienceInnovation

Event Title : International Invention Awards

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Upcycling Breakthrough: Transforming Plastic Waste Into High-Performance Materials

Researchers have developed a groundbreaking method to upcycle discarded plastics into new materials with enhanced properties.

This innovation not only offers a potential solution to the global plastic waste crisis — where over 90% of discarded plastic ends up in landfills or pollutes natural environments — but also transforms waste into valuable, multifunctional plastics.

Transforming Plastic Waste Into High-Value Materials

Chemists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a method to modify the polymers in discarded plastics, creating new materials with improved properties compared to the original plastic. This process, known as upcycling, could help address the global plastic waste crisis. Currently, about 450 million tons of plastic are discarded each year, but only 9% is recycled. The majority ends up in landfills, oceans, or is incinerated.

ORNL’s invention has the potential to reshape the future of plastic waste by rearranging the molecular building blocks of plastics to enhance their properties. Plastics are made up of polymer chains — molecular subunits linked together — which can be restructured to create stronger, more durable, and heat-resistant materials. By modifying how these polymer chains connect, scientists can develop versatile plastics with a wide range of applications.

Drawing Inspiration from Nobel-Winning Molecular Editing

Molecular editing is so promising that it has been the basis of two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry. In 2005, the prize went to developers of the metathesis reaction, which breaks and makes double bonds between carbon atoms in rings and chains so their subunits can swap to create new molecules limited only by imagination. Similarly, in 2020, the prize went to developers of CRISPR, “genetic scissors” for editing DNA strands, biopolymers made of nucleotide subunits that carry the code of life.

”This is CRISPR for editing polymers,” said ORNL’s Jeffrey Foster, who led a study that was published in Journal of the American Chemical Society. “However, instead of editing strands of genes, we are editing polymer chains. This isn’t the typical plastic recycling ‘melt and hope for the best’ scenario.”

Targeting High-Waste Plastics for a Bigger Impact

The ORNL researchers precisely edited commodity polymers that significantly contribute to plastic waste. In some experiments, the researchers worked with soft polybutadiene, which is common in rubber tires. In other experiments, they worked with tough acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, the stuff of plastic toys, computer keyboards, ventilation pipes, protective headgear, vehicle trim and molding, and kitchen appliances.

“This is a waste stream that’s really not recycled at all,” Foster said. “We’re addressing a significant component of the waste stream with this technology. That’d make a pretty big impact just from conservation of mass and energy from materials that are now going into landfills.”

The Upcycling Process: Dissolving and Modifying Waste Polymers

Dissolving the waste polymers is the first step in creating drop-in additives for polymer synthesis. The researchers shredded synthetic or commercial polybutadiene and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and immersed the material in a solvent, dichloromethane, to conduct a chemical reaction at a low temperature (40 degrees Celsius) for less than two hours.

A ruthenium catalyst facilitated the polymerization, or polymer addition. Industrial firms have used this catalyst to make robust plastics and to convert biomass such as plant oils into fuels and other high-value organic compounds with no difficulty, highlighting the potential for its use in chemical upcycling.

The molecular building blocks of the polymer backbone contain functional groups, or clusters of atoms that serve as reactive sites for modification. Notably, the double bonds between carbons increase the chances for chemical reactions that enable polymerization. A carbon ring opens at a double bond to create a polymer chain that grows as each functional polymer unit directly slips in, conserving the material. The plastic additive also helps control the molecular weight of the synthesized material and, in turn, its properties and performance.

Expanding Upcycling to Industrial-Scale Applications

If this material synthesis strategy could be expanded to a broader range of industrially important polymers, then it could prove an economically viable path for reusing manufacturing materials that today can only be used in a single product. The upcycled materials might be, for instance, softer and stretchier than the original polymers or, perhaps, easier to shape and harden into durable thermoset products.

The scientists upcycled plastic waste by employing two processes in tandem. Both are types of metathesis, which means a change of places. Double bonds break and form between carbon atoms, allowing polymer subunits to swap.

One process, called ring-opening metathesis polymerization, opens carbon rings and elongates them into chains. The other process, called cross metathesis, inserts chains of polymer subunits from one polymer chain into another.

Why Traditional Recycling Falls Short

Traditional recycling fails to capture the value in discarded plastics because it reuses polymers that become less valuable through degradation with each melt and reuse. By contrast, ORNL’s innovative upcycling utilizes the existing building blocks to incorporate the mass and characteristics of the waste material and provide added functionality and value.

”The new process has high atom economy,” Foster said. “That means that we can pretty much recover all the material that we put in.”

The ORNL scientists demonstrated that the process, which uses less energy and produces fewer emissions than traditional recycling, efficiently integrates waste materials without compromising polymer quality. Foster, Ilja Popovs and Tomonori Saito conceptualized the paper’s ideas. Nicholas Galan, Isaiah Dishner and Foster synthesized monomer subunits and optimized their polymerization. Joshua Damron performed nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy experiments to analyze reaction kinetics. Jackie Zheng, Chao Guan and Anisur Rahman characterized mechanical and thermal properties of final materials.

Scaling Up for a Circular Economy Future

“The vision is that this concept could be extended to any polymer that has some sort of backbone functional group to react with,” Foster said. If scaled up and expanded to employ other additives, broader classes of waste could be mined for molecular building blocks, dramatically reducing the environmental impact of other difficult-to-process plastics. The circular economy — in which waste materials are repurposed rather than discarded — then becomes a more realistic goal.

The researchers’ next plan is to explore different types of subunits within polymer chains and rearrange them to develop high-performance thermoset materials. These materials include epoxy resins, vulcanized rubber, polyurethane, and silicone. Unlike other plastics, once thermosets are cured, their tightly cross-linked molecular structure prevents them from being remelted or reshaped, making recycling particularly difficult.

The researchers are also interested in optimizing solvents for environmental sustainability during industrial processing.

”Some preprocessing is going to be required on these waste plastics that we still have to figure out,” Foster said.

Upcycling, plastic waste, high-performance materials, sustainability, recycling innovation, eco-friendly solutions, circular economy, waste reduction, green technology, environmental impact.

#Upcycling #PlasticWaste #Sustainability #EcoFriendly #RecyclingInnovation #GreenTech #CircularEconomy #WasteReduction #EnvironmentalImpact #SustainableMaterials

Event Title : International Invention Awards
Event Website : Visit: inventionawards.org

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Invention Awards

Friday, January 31, 2025

Ancient Greece and Rome’s Toxic Footprint Found in the Aegean

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Scientists Discover Bacteria That Eats “Forever Chemicals”

Testing Thousands of Compounds Simultaneously to Uncover New Drugs and Tailored Treatments

Monday, January 27, 2025

Physicists Found the Magic Number to Save Quantum Networks

Light-Speed Imaging: A Breakthrough in Edge Detection

Friday, January 24, 2025

Ultra-Slim Metamaterial Breakthrough Could Change How We Use Light

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Upcycling Breakthrough: Transforming Plastic Waste Into High-Performance Materials

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