US Patent Issued to Georgia Tech Research on Jan. 20 for "Mechanocatalytic depolymerization of plastics" (Georgia Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,528,927, issued on Jan. 20, was assigned to Georgia Tech Research Corp. (Atlanta).

"Mechanocatalytic depolymerization of plastics" was invented by Carsten Sievers (Atlanta), Andrew W. Tricker (Sandy Springs, Ga.), Sankar Nair (Atlanta), Christopher Jones (Atlanta) and Fani Boukouvala (Atlanta).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods for recycling polymers are provided. One embodiment provides a method for recycling synthetic polymers by combining the polymers with a solid depolymerizing catalyst in a vessel, mechanically shearing the combined polymers and the solid depolymerizing catalyst against each other to produce monomers ...