Upcycling Plastics: Transforming Polyethylene into Surfactants
Rather than simply recycling down, we upcycle post-consumer polyethylene into valuable surfactants and detergents. Our approach utilizes innovative C-C bond cleavage and functionalization strategies to turn environmental waste into useful products.
This research is supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE- Basic Energy Sciences) through iCOUP, and Energy Frontiers Research Center.
Closed-Loop Polyurethane Chemical Recycling
Polyurethane is notoriously difficult to recycle, but our group is pioneering closed-loop chemical recycling methods that recover original monomers (polyol) with high purity. We focus on the mechanisms of deconstruction using abundant, cheap and green reagents such as organic acids and glycols.
This research is support by the Dow Chemical Co. and the UCSB Mellichamp Sustainability Initiative.
Bioinspired Dinickel Electrocatalysis
Taking cues from metalloenzymes, we design synthetic dinickel complexes to tackle the energetic hurdles of small molecule activation (H2, CO2, CO, & O2). This project bridges the gap between biology and electrocatalysis, seeking efficient ways to convert simple molecules into fuel and chemicals. Biologically, the family of tris(carboxylate) dinickel complexes prove to act as a model system, belonging to class III mixed valency according to the Robin-Day Classification Scheme. Being able to coordinate with C1 small molecules (CO/CO2) has been of intrigue: by coordinating CO, oxidative addition becomes of interest for the potential in carbon-carbon bond functionalization. Electrochemically, these complexes exhibit reversible metal-based features via cyclic voltammetry, and the hope would be to utilize these to electrochemically reduce carbon dioxide into useful C1 substrates (methanol, formic acid, etc.).
This research is partly supported by the UCSB Mellichamp Sustainability Initiative.