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Envision a scenario where all varieties of plastic vessels, packaging, carbon-fiber composite bicycles, and knee replacements could be recycled collectively as one processing stream. This is the bold aspiration of scientists at Washington University in St. Louis; the University of California, Berkeley; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Although less than one-third of the total refuse produced in the United States is recycled at present, the group is employing artificial intelligence (AI) to create new substances that could facilitate straightforward recycling of mixed waste streams back into molecules that can subsequently be transformed into a new material with specific attributes.

Christopher Cooper, an assistant professor of energy, environmental, and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at WashU, and Brooks Abel, an assistant professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, along with Debra Audus and Sara Orski from NIST, will advance AI-driven design of structurally diverse and decomposable polymers, supported by a three-year grant of nearly $1.4 million from the National Science Foundation. Their objective is to develop new eco-friendly polymers that encompass a wide array of properties that can be recycled without the need for expensive and ineffective separation from mixed waste streams.

Discover more on the McKelvey Engineering website.

The article AI to spark new recyclable plastics design was first published on The Source.

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