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In-line NMR guided orthogonal transformation of real-life plastics

Nature volume 643, pages 395–403 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The global crisis of plastic waste accumulation threatens wildlife and ecosystems1. Catalytic processes that convert plastic waste into valuable chemicals and fuels offer promising solutions2. Recycling or upcycling of real-life plastic mixtures is challenging owing to their diverse composition and structure3. Here we propose a product-oriented strategy leveraging the orthogonality in reactivities of different functional groups in plastic mixtures to yield valuable products. This approach involves identifying functional groups followed by converting a selective component in the mixture to valuable products. We use mixtures of polystyrene, polylactic acid, polyurethane, polycarbonate, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene terephthalate, polyethylene and polypropylene, as well as real-life plastics, to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The diverse physical and chemical properties of these components, which typically hinder direct recovery, offer opportunities for extraction and transformation with the proposed strategy. From a 20-g mixture of real-life plastics, including polystyrene foam, a polylactic acid straw, a polyurethane tube, a polycarbonate mask, a polyvinyl chloride bag, a polyethylene terephthalate bottle, a polyethylene dropper and a polypropylene bottle, we obtained more than 8 separate chemicals: 1.3 g of benzoic acid, 0.5 g of plasticizer, 0.7 g of alanine, 0.7 g of lactic acid, 1.4 g of aromatic amine salt, 2.1 g of bisphenol A, 2.0 g of terephthalic acid and 3.5 g of C3–C6 alkanes. This study reveals the potential for designing transformation strategies for complex plastic waste based on their chemical nature and opens paths for managing end-of-life plastic mixtures.

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Fig. 1: Proposed strategy for the recovery of mixed plastics.
Fig. 2: Two-dimensional 1H–13C FSLG-HETCOR NMR spectra of individual chemical reagents in sample 1.
Fig. 3: Orthogonal transformation of polymer reagent mixtures (sample 1).
Fig. 4: Orthogonal transformation of real-life plastic mixtures (sample 2).

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors.

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Acknowledgements

This work received financial support by the Natural Science Foundation of China (22472004, 22072002, 22232001, 22302004, 22241801 and 22022202), the National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFA1501102 and 2023YFC3905500), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Z240029), China National Petroleum Corporation-Peking University Strategic Cooperation Project of Fundamental Research, and the New Cornerstone Science Foundation. D.M. acknowledges support from the Tencent Foundation through the XPLORER PRIZE. We thank L. Zhang, T. Fu and L. Nie for providing the real-life waste samples.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Mei-Qi Zhang, Yida Zhou

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, New Cornerstone Science Laboratory, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Mei-Qi Zhang, Ruochen Cao, Shuheng Tian, Yuchen Jiao, Zhenbo Guo, Maolin Wang, Hongpeng Peng, Bo Sun, Bingjun Xu, Meng Wang & Ding Ma

  2. State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, National Engineering Research Center of Lower-Carbon Catalysis Technology, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, People’s Republic of China

    Yida Zhou & Shutao Xu

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Contributions

D.M. and Meng Wang conceived of the project. M.-Q.Z., R.C., S.T., Y.J. and Z.G. performed most of the reactions. Y.Z. and S.X. performed the NMR measurements. Maolin Wang, H.P. and B.S. performed the initial explorations of the extraction pre-processes. M.-Q.Z., Y.Z., S.X., Meng Wang, B.X. and D.M. wrote the paper. All authors contributed to the discussion and revision of the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Meng Wang, Shutao Xu or Ding Ma.

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Nature thanks Matthew Jones, Hatice Mutlu and Haritz Sardon for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Table 1 Orthogonal transformation of polymer reagent mixtures (sample-1)
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Extended Data Table 2 Experimental details for the results showed in Fig. 3
Full size table
Extended Data Table 3 The real-life waste samples with unknown compositions
Full size table

Supplementary information

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This file contains Supplementary Methods, Figs. 1–71, Tables 1–6 and References.

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Zhang, MQ., Zhou, Y., Cao, R. et al. In-line NMR guided orthogonal transformation of real-life plastics. Nature 643, 395–403 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09088-7

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