India invents a kind of environmental protection plastics degradation method

Indian researchers have developed an environmentally friendly way to degrade plastics. They just need to put them in a 70 ℃ solution containing glucose and metal ions and stir them for several days to degrade them into molecules.

A team led by researchers at the Indian Institute of technology, Madras, found that the new method could be used to degrade plastic materials such as polytetrafluoroethylene. Relevant research papers have been published in the journal sustainable chemistry and engineering of American Chemical Society.

Polytetrafluoroethylene is a kind of high performance material with heat resistance, chemical inertness, insulation stability and low friction. The researchers first put a magnetic stirrer coated with polytetrafluoroethylene into a solution at 70 ℃ for 15 days, which contains metal ions and 1000 ppm of glucose (1 ppm is one millionth of a million).

The researchers then found tiny pieces floating on the surface of the solution with bright red light. The results show that these bright particles contain molecular fragments of polytetrafluoroethylene polymer.

It was also found that the degradation of polytetrafluoroethylene did not occur without stirring, glucose or metal ions; the degradation rate decreased at room temperature; with the increase of glucose content in the solution, the degradation of polytetrafluoroethylene increased.

The researchers explained that polytetrafluoroethylene may be degraded into molecules through triboelectric degradation during continuous agitation. They cautioned that since many modern cookers are coated with Teflon, similar chemical reactions can occur on cookers, resulting in micro plastics in food. Similarly, this kind of triboelectric degradation process may also occur in the ocean, where there are a large number of metal ions, waves provide continuous agitation, so it may become one of the ways to produce marine microplastics.