SBIR Phase I: Versatile Polymers for Making New Components in Space and Eliminating Solid Waste

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是解决回收超过使用寿命的塑料的需求。世纪中期的“塑料革命”为社会带来了巨大的附加值，但也创造了高度耐用的塑料，用于制造寿命有限的物品。对于许多这些聚合物，存在有限的具有成本效益的替代品。每天有800万件塑料被扔进海洋，每年约有1000万吨。虽然有方法来分解或脱附在普通塑料部件中使用的聚合物，但这些方法在成本、能源使用、降解时间或可扩展性方面通常不是有效的。一个极端的例子，需要能源和时间效率的解聚聚合物是在太空任务。在地球轨道上处理固体和清除太空垃圾的成本非常高，必须由轨道卫星监测和避免。更具挑战性的是，由于缺乏原材料，在长期的太空任务中需要可重复使用的材料。该SBIR第一阶段项目提议开发一种基于聚合物的塑料技术，该技术允许在空间使命完成后快速、低能耗、可回收地处置塑料。该项目还建议对塑料进行处理，以便产品可以扩展其价值，并回收利用，以在太空中制造相同或不同的物体。关闭聚合物-碳循环有可能延长太空任务，降低所需的供应材料数量，并减少轨道太空垃圾的数量。该项目正在开发一种独特的聚合物家族，可以通过光或热触发轻松解聚回起始单体。聚合物由环状、低上限温度聚合物组成。低上限温度意味着一旦聚合物中的单个化学键断裂，就会形成两端，这会立即导致整个聚合物分子解聚回到其原始单体。 解聚的单体可以被蒸发以使塑料部件“消失”，或者可以被捕获并用于重新组装新的塑料部件。该项目将开发特定的解聚引发剂和连续流聚合反应器，用于在太空中合成塑料部件（以及其他地方的地球应用）。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to address the need for recycling plastics that have surpassed their useful life. The ‘plastic’s revolution’ of the mid-twentieth century has greatly added value to society but has also created highly durable plastics that are used to make objects of limited life-expectancy. There are limited cost-effective alternatives to many of these polymers. Every day, 8 million pieces of plastic are thrown into the ocean amounting to 10 million tons per year. Although there are approaches to decompose or depolymerize the polymers used in common plastic parts, these methods are not generally efficient across the dimensions of cost, energy use, time for degradation, or scalability. An extreme example of the need for energy and time efficient depolymerization of polymers is in space missions. There is a very high cost of disposing solids in earth’s orbit and removing space-junk which must be monitored and avoided by orbiting satellites. Even more challenging is the need for reusable materials during extended space missions due to the lack of raw materials. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a polymer-based plastics technology that allows for rapid, low-energy, triggerable disposal of plastics when a space mission has been completed. This project also proposes to carry out the disposal of plastics so that the products can extend their value and be recycled to make the same or different objects in space. Closing the polymer-carbon cycle has potential to extend space missions, lower the amount of supply materials needed, and reduce the amount of orbiting space junk. This project is developing a unique family of polymers which can be easily depolymerized back to the starting monomers via a photo or thermal trigger. The polymers are composed of cyclic, low ceiling temperature polymers. The low ceiling temperature means that once a single chemical bond in the polymer is broken, two ends are formed which instantaneously lead to depolymerization of the entire polymer molecule back to its original monomers. The depolymerized monomers can be evaporated to make the plastic parts ‘disappear’ or can be captured and used to repolymerize a new plastic component. This project will develop specific depolymerization triggers and a continuous-flow polymerization reactor for synthesizing plastic parts in space (and elsewhere for on-earth applications).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.