Chemical recycling turns silicone waste into reusable building blocks with up to 99% yield

by Stefanie Terp, Technical University of Berlin

edited by Gaby Clark , reviewed by Robert Egan

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Add to Preferred Sources Credit: Charlotte May from Pexels Silicones are widely used in industry, medicine and everyday products due to their exceptional thermal and chemical stability. However, it is precisely these properties that have made recycling silicones extremely problematic in the past. Researchers at the Institute of Chemistry at TU Berlin have now succeeded in breaking down the polymer chains of silicone molecules into their basic building blocks. The resulting molecule dimethyldichlorosilane can then be reused as a starting material for the production of new silicone compounds.