Fig. 1: Literature analysis and influence of melt viscosity.
From: Assessment of transport phenomena in catalyst effectiveness for chemical polyolefin recycling
a, Aggregated number of scientific publications on the hydrogenolysis/hydrocracking of polyolefins, classified according to the stirring configuration and molecular weight. Low Mw is defined as <100 kDa and high Mw is defined as >100 kDa. See Supplementary Table 2 for numerical values. b, Dependency of the viscosity of PP340 and HDPE200 on shear rate at different temperatures (Supplementary Tables 3 and 4). The approximate stirring rates required to reach the equivalent shear rates in a typical reactor used for the catalytic tests in this study are included. More details are available in Supplementary Note 1. The viscosity of water at 298 K is shown for comparison. c, Maximum viscosity of fluids amenable to the magnetic or mechanical stirrers usually available in research laboratories. High-molecular-weight (and some low-molecular-weight) plastics require mechanical stirring, as shown in Supplementary Videos 1 and 2.
