Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/10/2024
9:00 am - 10:00 am
Location
HPNP 1404
Categories
Bradley Olsen, Ph.D.
Department of Chemical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Website
Title:
“Engineering Systems for Polymer End-of-Life”
Abstract:
The exponential rise in the production and use of polymers, particularly in single-use applications, has led to a dramatic increase in their environmental prevalence and problems with waste management. At the same time, polymers have become indispensable to modern life through their integration into our food, shelter, clothing, transportation and healthcare systems. To maintain the benefits that polymers bring to society while addressing the challenges related to waste management, microplastic pollution, and climate change, we need to redesign our system for the production, use, and disposal of these materials to become more circular and to address the challenges that will occur when polymers do finally return to the natural environment. This talk will focus particularly on the challenges of end-of-life, where the goal is to use a synthesized polymer as many times as possible before it is discarded as waste. Mechanical recycling provides our most widespread and carbon-efficient method for polymer reuse, but in the United States it is particularly inefficient. We demonstrate several new technologies for mechanical and optical sorting and separation of recycled polymer materials that help to address the fraction of recyclable polymer, the diversity of materials that can be accepted for recycling, and the incentive structure around recycling that can drive better design for recyclability. Due to system leakage, polymer degradation, or other factors, materials will eventually be discarded to environmental systems. At this time, the way that they degrade in the environment is of paramount importance. However, data to aid us in designing polymers for degradability is scarce. Therefore, we present a high-throughput system for polymer degradation testing that enables us to gather and analyze large data sets to understand polymer environmental fate.
Prof. Olsen earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at MIT, his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California – Berkeley working with Rachel Segalman and was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology working with David Tirrell, Julia Kornfield and Zhen-Gang Wang. He started as a professor at MIT in December 2009 and is currently the Alexander and I. Michael (1960) Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Olsen’s research expertise is in materials chemistry and polymer physics, with focused activities in the areas of molecular self-assembly, polymer networks, natural and sustainable materials, and polymer informatics. He has published over 200 scientific articles and has over 20 registered or pending patents in his name in the area of biological materials, personal care products, sustainable materials and recycling technologies. He is a fellow of the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society and an associate editor at the journal Macromolecules. He is also a co-founder of the biotech startup Purvala Bioscience.
