Joel Kaar
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Engineering
Plastic waste keeps piling up in the environment. Recycling it is hard because the process must be cheap and must also yield plastic as good as the original.
- Fields
Engineering
Biochemistry
Chemistry
- Topics
polyethylene terephthalate
plastic recycling
biocatalysis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether esterases, enzymes that cut ester bonds, can break down PET by alcoholysis in nonaqueous solvents, using lipases such as cutinase as model enzymes.
- Determine how water activity, set with salt hydrates, controls the rate of lipase-driven PET alcoholysis, linking reaction speed to the thermodynamics of depolymerization.
- Measure how solvent properties and the choice of alcohol nucleophile, the molecule that attacks the ester bond, tune PET breakdown rates, including through solvent-induced swelling of the polymer.
- Reduce how slowly lipase moves through organic solvents using rational strategies such as ion pairing with surfactants, to speed up enzymatic plastic conversion.
More about the research
Enzymes, nature's catalysts, can break down plastics. So far, though, that research has used reactions in water, which limits how efficiently enzymes can convert plastic waste. This project asks whether enzymes working in "dry" organic solvents can take apart polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the plastic in drink bottles, food containers and clothing fibers. The goal is to produce building blocks that are easy to turn back into new plastic.
Why it matters
An enzyme-based route to break PET into reusable building blocks could make plastic recycling cheaper and less energy-intensive. It could avoid the high temperatures and grinding steps current methods need, which would help keep bottles and textile waste out of the environment. The approach may extend to other synthetic polyesters. It may also suggest ways to design polyesters that are easier to recycle.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Lauren Pincus
George Washington University, DC·Earth & Environmental Science
Isolate how specific UV-generated free radicals control the rate of photo-oxidation in polyethylene, polystyrene and PET, tracking both intermediate and final oxidation products in controlled experiments.
Michele Sarazen
Princeton University, NJ·Engineering·Early-career
Make hierarchical bifunctional zeolites, which combine tiny and larger pores with metal and acid sites, and test how their pore structure and connectivity change rates of polyolefin hydrocracking and catalyst deactivation.
Kyle Francis Biegasiewicz
Emory University, GA·Chemistry
Develop new enzyme-driven oxidation and bond-forming reactions using enzymatic halide recycling, in which vanadium-dependent haloperoxidases repeatedly oxidize a small amount of halide salt with hydrogen peroxide.
The school
University of Colorado Boulder: 36 labs on PI Pages, $718M a year on research, 447 research doctorates a year.
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