(plastemart) --
A low-cost, high-yield process for making polyethylene terephthalate (PET) by a
team led by a University of Massachusetts chemical engineer.
You can mix
our renewable chemical with the petroleum-based material and the consumer would
not be able to tell the difference," said Paul J. Dauenhauer, an assistant
professor of chemical engineering, who led the team of researchers from UMass
and University of Delaware.
Their findings were recently published in
the journal ACS Catalysis. The new process transforms glucose, a simple sugar
derived from such things as grasses and trees, into paraxylene. As per the team
leader, a complete cost analysis and process design is still one to two years
away.
But the process has significant benefits over competing
technologies- the process can achieve 75% yield of p-xylene, while competing
technologies only achieve yields below 20%. |
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