A research team from the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology has invented a new method called “hydrogen breathing”, in order to recycle plastic waste made of polyethylene.

Polyethylene plastic, which is one of the five main types of plastic, is highly stable and does not biodegrade easily. Considering the similarities between polyethylene and oil, in terms of both chemical structure and composition, the team borrowed technology from the oil industry to devise its new method.

Han Buxing, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the research uses environmental pollutants such as abandoned polyethylene plastics to prepare petroleum-based chemical products, providing a new method for the “artificial carbon cycle” of waste plastics.

Plastic products are made from petroleum derivatives, in addition to some chemicals, and plastic bags are thermoplastic materials made from polyethylene, and other materials extracted from petroleum.

Its chemical composition is in the form of long, repetitive and connected molecules with each other, and this leads to its decomposition in nature being very difficult and takes hundreds of years, in addition to being a mass that is unable to decompose, it is a harmful substance that may cause some diseases, especially those made of polyurethane – Vinyl Chloride.

Source: Qatar News Agency