VATIS UPDATE Article

Two students Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, from the University of Pennsylvania, the United States, have developed a prototype for breaking down polystyrene into carbon dioxide (CO2) and water, and they see their technology being used in two ways – first, for landfill and beach cleanups, and, second, to create a secondary product to be used in textile manufacturing. The process first uses a solvent to dissolve the plastic, then enzymes catalyze depolymerization of its base chemicals, breaking it down into the more manageable compounds.

Wang envisages sending mobile clean-up stations – either a truck or a floating vessel – with a 150,000 liter bio-digester onboard. Workers could then load up the tanks with polystyrene and wait for the waste to degrade. The aim is to get the process down to as little as 24 hours. (Other processes, including these mealworms, take longer and don’t break down the whole waste stream).

“The idea is there’s no need to collect the plastic and ship it to some centralized location. This plastic is very lightweight, so transporting even one kilogram of it would take a huge amount of volume and be very unsustainable in terms of transportation,” said Wang. Wang and Yao’s company is called BioCellection. They aim to start field-testing this summer, hopefully in China, and to finalize a commercially viable process within two years. Wang hopes to remove about nine grams of plastic per liter of bacteria.