Article: This AI-Designed Enzyme Can Devour Plastic Trash In Hours: Video (forbes.com) "Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin announced Thursday that they had used artificial intelligence to successfully engineer a type of enzyme, called a hydrolase, that can break down PET plastic into its component molecules. These materials can then be reformed into new products."
Topic raised here is of interest to me. I cannot access Forbes without using some trickery. Maybe this PET decomp resembles https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/prot.26245 Or other publications that have come lately? Do readers here want a general view? Many different plastic polymers are discarded. Some get front-end recycled and I think polypropylene plays well there. Maybe you already own a garment touted as environmentally friendly in this regard. Plastic polymers that become part of 'mixed waste' streams are vexing. Some are not good for combustion/bioenergy, making bad chemicals in the burn. Our global problem is that all come together in waste streams, and segregation is a low-skill low-pay thing. Which could provide feedstock streams to idealized microbial enzyme action. As described by several for PET polymer, with many more links than were presented here. There is much more published research on microbes and their enzymes on degrading other polymers, I mean dang, feast your eyes. For me, the problem is that none address waste streams as they actually arrive. All polymers mixed together and mixed with many other things. Selecting one polymer and one microbe and one enzyme appears to thrill top publishing journals. Good for them. Treating randomly mixed waste including human-sourced plastic polymers is a larger thing. I'm waiting for published research on that. No, not exactly waiting; I am irritating researchers in this field to get off their damn butts and undertake relevant research. Not everything trickles down to Prius Chat, my dears
Temperature and pH requirements for an enzyme will likely make that difficult to keep right with a mixed waste stream. Well, mostly the pH. For living microbes, something toxic to them can be in that waste. Thermal depolyerimization and pyrolysis maybe the best bet for mixed stream.
Latest article in ChemSusChem indicates that the PET used was synthesized in the lab. This is typical for demonstrations of enzymatic depolymerization potential. But it also leads one to think about the heterogeneity of waste streams, which is where value could ultimately be obtained. @Trollbait also touched on that idea.
My neighbor sent me a video on why recycling doesn't matter. It would be cool if this technology could help convert everyone.
