A new process turns plastic waste into gasoline and diesel fuel

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new way to transform polyethylene, one of the world's most common plastics, into gasoline- and diesel-like fuels.

Polyethylene is widely used in products such as shopping bags and white plastic cutting boards, and large amounts of it ultimately end up as waste. The ORNL team's method combines the plastic with molten salts containing aluminum chloride. These salts perform two jobs at once, acting as both the reaction medium and the catalyst that drives the chemical conversion.

The researchers have applied for a patent for the technology, and the findings were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society .

To understand why the process works, the scientists closely tracked the chemical reactions that convert the polymer into fuel molecules.