Extracting and using valuable substances from algae and plastics ...

description

Plastics are omnipresent, whether as packaging material, technical components or plastic toys. And at the end of their use, they often remain as waste with all their valuable basic components. With chemical recycling, these can be recovered and used for new syntheses, thereby conserving resources. Instead of fossil sources, valuable chemicals can also be extracted from algae and used in bio-based syntheses.
At the Long Night of Science, we will show which process engineering ideas we can use to (re)recover and use substances. We explain how cavitation cracks cell walls, how high pressure decomposes plastics and how newly developed catalysts turn them into valuable new products.