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Supervisor: Haoxiang Yan
Title: Optimizing Ruthenium-Based Catalysts for Selective Hydrogenolysis of Polyethylene (PE) into C6-C18 Hydrocarbons
Earliest start: 3rd period
Description: It is challenging to recycle PE due to its C-C backbone structure.[1, 2] This project aims to develop a ruthenium (Ru) based catalyst for the selective hydrogenolysis of PE into C6-C18 hydrocarbons. Ru/C catalyst has been tested on different types of PE under mild condition (200 °C, 20 bar H2). The results show that the PE were over-cracked into gaseous products instead of C6-C18hydrocarbons. To address this, Ru-based bimetallic catalysts with metals like Ti, Nb, W, and Re will be developed to improve the selectivity and suppress methane formation. By adding this metals, electronic properties, hydrogen spillover, and metal-support interactions will change and possibly improve selectivity towards C6-C18.[3] Catalyst performance will be tested on different PE using parr reactor.
[1] Tan, Y., et al., Catalytic chemical recycling and upcycling of polyolefin plastics. Giant, 2024. 19.
[2] Rorrer, J.E., G.T. Beckham, and Y. Román-Leshkov, Conversion of Polyolefin Waste to Liquid Alkanes with Ru-Based Catalysts under Mild Conditions. JACS Au, 2021. 1(1): p. 8-12.
[3] Yuan, Y., et al., Controlling Product Distribution of Polyethylene Hydrogenolysis Using Bimetallic RuM(3) (M = Fe, Co, Ni) Catalysts.Chem Bio Eng, 2024. 1(1): p. 67-75.