US Patent Issued to Northwestern University on March 17 for "Polyester hydrogenolytic deconstruction via tandem catalysis" (Illinois Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,577,365, issued on March 17, was assigned to Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.).

"Polyester hydrogenolytic deconstruction via tandem catalysis" was invented by Yosi Kratish (Evanston, Ill.) and Tobin J. Marks (Evanston, Ill.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Provided are methods for depolymerizing polyesters, e.g., PET, PBT, and PEN. In embodiments, a method for depolymerizing a polyester comprises combining a polyester comprising a plurality of ester linking groups (R'C(O)OR), a metal triflate catalyst, and a hydrogenation catalyst, under conditions to cleave a C-O bond in an alkoxy group (OR) of an ester linking group of the plural...