Modern recycling systems can break down and recycle glass, metals, and some plastics. But plastic films, like grocery store bags or shrink wrap, can鈥檛 be recycled through conventional recycling systems and can even gum up recycling facility machines if not properly disposed of, increasing costs and waste. But what if you could make use of that material instead by converting it to diesel fuel?
A team of researchers from Iowa State University and Ames National Laboratory are finding out how. Through the U.S. Department of Energy鈥檚 (DOE鈥檚) Energy I-Corps program, the team learned how to address some of the technological and commercialization gaps in bringing their patented single-step catalytic conversion technology to market.
鈥淭he plastic waste we can address in this process represents extra disposal costs and pollution,鈥� project lead Aaron Sadow said. 鈥淭his is doing something better than just putting the waste in the landfill鈥攚e are recovering the energy in the petroleum originally used to make it.鈥�
Starting out in the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program, Sadow, a chemistry professor at Iowa State University and senior scientist at Ames National Laboratory, worked with fellow professor Wenyu Huang, along with Iowa State graduate Dr. Akalanka Tennakoon, to develop the technology. They fine-tuned their path to commercialization by conducting customer discovery interviews to identify opportunities in the market and potential pain points for customers.
By joining DOE鈥檚 Energy I-Corps, the team hoped to strengthen their approach to commercialization and identify the barriers to adoption.聽鈥淏y the time we had joined DOE鈥檚 Energy I-Corps, we had revised our hypothesis of how to commercialize, changed targets, rethought what a company could look like, and had a startup company ready to market this process,鈥� Sadow said.