Polyethylene hydrogenolysis to liquid products over bimetallic catalysts with favorable environmental footprint and economics
Assessing the sustainability of plastic chemical recycling requires realistic feedstocks and catalysts designed within sustainability-led frameworks (Plastic-to-X). We link catalyst design and systems analysis to study hydrogenolysis of high-density polyethylene (virgin and bottle caps; M<sub>w</sub> = 100-200 kDa). We report Ru-Ni alloy nanoparticles (3-4 nm) supported on titania that yield up to 55% liquid C<sub>6</sub>-C<sub>45</sub> products under optimized conditions, whereas monometallic Ru produces virtually no liquids Operando spectroscopy and simulations reveal structure sensitivity: backbone scission follows dehydrogenation and hydrogenation cycles at defective alloy sites formed in situ. Integrating these mechanistic insights with life cycle and techno-economic analyses indicates profitable processing of plastic caps over the optimal catalyst (2.5 wt% Ru, 5 wt% Ni) with substantially lower CO<sub>2</sub> emissions even when using green H<sub>2</sub>. Furthermore, within the Plastic-to-X framework, we identify a minimum average chain length threshold of C<sub>11</sub> for product distributions as a critical design metric to reconcile environmental and economic objectives.
Authors
- Javier Pérez‐Ramírez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5805-7355)
- Rolf Erni (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2391-5943)
- Jordi Morales‐Vidal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8725-5051)
- Antonio J. Martín (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3482-8829)
- Shibashish D. Jaydev (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7251-273X)
- Gonzalo Guillén‐Gosálbez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6074-8473)
- Henrik Eliasson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2975-0334)
- Yuzhen Ge (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2552-376X)
- Cecilia Salah (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3376-706X)
- Pol Sanz Berman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8736-404X)
- Núria López (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9150-5941)
- Iris Nogueroles-Langa
Institutions
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Institut Català d'Investigació Química (ES)
- Institute of Catalysis and Petrochemistry (RU)
- Universitat Rovira i Virgili (ES)
- Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (CH)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-11-10
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65260-7
- Citations
- 4
- Primary Topic
- Polymer crystallization and properties
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.43
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- Generalitat de Catalunya
- Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
- Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
- Barcelona Supercomputing Center
- Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca