Degradation, Valorization and Upcycling of Polymer Materials Toward a Circular Economy
A special issue of Processes (ISSN 2227-9717). This special issue belongs to the section "Chemical Processes and Systems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 280
Special Issue Editor
Interests: polymer degradation; sustainable materials; circular economy; elastomer depolymerization; polymer composites; material characterization
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The growing accumulation of polymer waste represents a major challenge for sustainable manufacturing and materials engineering. Traditional recycling approaches often face limitations related to material quality loss and restricted end-use applications. In recent years, polymer degradation and upcycling strategies have gained increasing attention as promising routes to recover value from end-of-life plastics, elastomers, and composite materials. From my perspective as a process and materials researcher, a deeper understanding of degradation mechanisms is essential to designing efficient and scalable circular solutions.
This Special Issue, titled “Degradation, Valorization and Upcycling of Polymer Materials Toward a Circular Economy”, aims to collect high-quality research that contributes to transforming polymer waste into valuable chemicals, functional materials, or reusable feedstocks. The focus is on process-oriented approaches that combine chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Contributions addressing thermal, chemical, catalytic, biological, or hybrid degradation routes are particularly welcome, as are studies on process modeling, material characterization, and scale-up challenges.
By bringing together fundamental and applied studies, this Special Issue seeks to highlight practical pathways that support the implementation of circular economy concepts in polymer processing, with the overall objective of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.
Prof. Dr. Cecilia Daniela Treviño-Quintanilla
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- polymer degradation
- upcycling
- circular economy
- recycling technologies
- elastomer depolymerization
- catalytic processes
- sustainable materials
- polymer valorization
- environmental impact mitigation
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