# Vaporizing plastics recycles them into nothing but gas | Ars Technica

<https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/vaporizing-plastics-recycles-them-into-nothing-but-gas/>

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## What Jamie wrote

The amount of energy it takes to break down plastic, if we even can break it down, is ridiculous. 

> In both plastics, exposure to sodium on alumina broke each polymer chain into shorter polymer chains and created breakable carbon-carbon double bonds at the ends. The chains continued to break over and over. Both then underwent a second process known as olefin metathesis. They were exposed to a stream of ethylene gas flowing into a reaction chamber while being introduced to tungsten oxide on silica, which resulted in the breakage of the carbon-carbon bonds.
> 
> The reaction breaks all the carbon-carbon bonds in polyethylene and polypropylene, with the carbon atoms released during the breaking of these bonds ending up attached to molecules of ethylene."The ethylene is critical to this reaction, as it is a co-reactant," researcher RJ Conk, one of the authors of the study, told Ars Technica. "The broken links then react with ethylene, which removes the links from the chain. Without ethylene, the reaction cannot occur."

No this doesn't mean you should use more plastic, but at least there is some progress on a path to break it down.

## Facts

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## Appears in

- [WT294: Weekly Thing 294 / Vaporizing, Intelligence, Contraption](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/294/), Notable

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## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/vaporizing-plastics-recycles-them-into-nothing-but-gas/