Recycling and Upcycling of Plastic Wastes
A special issue of Sustainable Chemistry (ISSN 2673-4079).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 2514
Special Issue Editors
Interests: green chemistry; heterogeneous catalysis; synthesis and characterization of nanostructured materials; thermochemical and catalytic processes for biomass valorisation; biobased polymers and nanocomposites
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: renewable energy and waste-to-energy technologies; liquid transportation fuels; biomass fuels; reaction engineering; thermodynamics; fuel refining and desulfurization
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The need for plastic waste valorization via recycling or upcycling technologies has become a necessity that spurs from the projected depletion of fossil resources (petroleum and coal), but mostly from the emerging environmental pollution and the associated detrimental effects on human and animal health. The nature/composition and origin of municipal or industrial plastic wastes that are based on existing high performance engineering thermoplastic and thermoset polymers reinforced with various organic/inorganic additives, determine the applicability of mechanical or (thermo)chemical recycling towards lower-grade plastics or back to the monomers or other platform chemicals with a synthetic polymer potential. Alternatively, chemical upcycling may transform plastic waste to chemicals, materials, or high quality fuels via conventional (or adjusted) petroleum refining catalytic processes. From the economic and sustainability perspective, collection and sorting issues, along with the whole logistics and legislation chain (e.g., transportation, storage, and security, etc.), play an equally important role. Looking at the future, the molecular design of new “conventional” polymers or bio-based polymers and composites, which may be subjected to facile chemical recycling via green and mild methods, in terms of energy and toxic solvents requirements, is also of paramount importance. Within this context, we invite the submission of original research papers and review articles presenting the latest achievements and trends in sustainable mechanical and (bio)chemical processes for the recycling and upcycling of all types of traditional plastic waste, as well as modern, specially designed petroleum-derived polymers/plastics and bio-based polymers, towards recycled plastics, chemicals/monomers, fuels and materials, including the important topics of technoeconomic analysis and life cycle assessment.
Prof. Dr. Konstantinos S. Triantafyllidis
Dr. Michael T. Timko
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- waste plastics
- municipal and industrial wastes
- collection, management, pretreatment, sorting
- thermoplastics, thermosets, composites
- Bio-based polymers
- (bio)degradable polymers
- mechanical recycling
- (thermo)chemical recycling and upcycling
- pyrolysis, gasification, hydrolysis, solvolysis
- biological recycling
- homogeneous, heterogeneous, and bio-catalysis
- alternative/benign methods (sono- and photo-chemistry, microwave)
- catalytic upgrading
- platform chemicals and monomers, fuels
- techno-economic analysis
- life cycle assessment
- green and sustainable chemistry
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