Dr. Olga Kuksenok’s group’s article “Transforming Waste Cooking Oil into Linear and Branched Polyethylene Mimics” published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society appears in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric. The article discusses how this research group has developed a new way to turn waste cooking oil into high-performance, recyclable plastics and strong adhesives, offering a potential sustainable alternative to traditional plastics made from fossil fuels.
Plastic pollution is a major environmental problem because most plastics — like polyethylene (PE) — are made from crude oil and do not break down easily in the environment. To address this issue, researchers looked at waste cooking oil (WCO), a common biomass waste product, as a cheap and abundant feedstock. They developed a process that transforms both the fatty acid and glycerol components of WCO into chemical building blocks called monomers. These monomers were then chemically linked together to form long-chain polyesters that behave very much like polyethylene.
Two key kinds of polymers were made: linear and branched polyesters. By adjusting how these chains are built, the researchers could control properties like flexibility and strength. The resulting materials match or even beat the performance of low-density polyethylene (LDPE), a common type of plastic.
Importantly, these new plastics have a built-in recycling advantage. Unlike ordinary polyethylene, which is hard to break back down, the WCO-derived polyesters can be chemically depolymerized (broken into monomers) and re-formed under relatively mild conditions — even when mixed with conventional plastics.
Some of the branched polymers also showed exceptionally strong adhesive properties, outperforming commercial glues in tests.
This research highlights a waste-to-materials strategy that aligns with circular-economy principles by turning a problematic waste into useful, recyclable materials.
To read the article click here.
Media coverage can be found here.
