近日，浙江大学王勇团队报道了无催化剂、微滴介导的废塑料转化为二酸。相关论文于2026年7月15日发表在《自然》杂志上。

塑料废弃物的累积对环境和公众健康构成全球性威胁。尽管通过催化升级回收将塑料转化为高价值化学品前景可期，但其工业应用受到添加剂引起的催化剂失活、原料异质性、工艺不灵活以及经济可行性有限等因素的制约。

研究组报道了一种无催化剂升级回收策略，该策略利用在微滴界面原位产生羟基自由基，可在温和条件下将多种废塑料（从聚烯烃到橡胶）氧化裂解为羧酸。通过消除依赖催化剂的路径，该方法规避了催化剂设计和中毒等关键挑战，同时大幅降低了技术壁垒和成本。该方法在相对温和条件下实现了聚乙烯（PE）的完全转化，对短链二酸的选择性接近69%，并证明了对混合商业塑料的广泛适用性，且可放大至300克规模。

自由基中间体分析揭示了H2O在介导独特氧化降解机制中的关键作用：羟基自由基依次加成到烷基自由基上，这与经典的烷烃液相有氧氧化不同。这种界面自由基介导的策略能以最少的基础设施实现可持续的聚合物升级回收。更广泛地说，据研究组所知，这项工作为微滴化学的首次工业实施提供了可扩展的蓝图，并对有机酸合成及其他领域的氧化过程具有变革性意义。

附：英文原文

Title: Catalyst-free, microdroplet-mediated waste plastic conversion to diacids

Author: Gao, Ruiliang, Zhang, Liwei, Lewis, Richard J., Wang, Hao, Pan, Zhiyan, Zhang, Yage, Yu, Zekai, Liu, Zhiqiang, Guo, Xiaolin, Du, Xiangbowen, Liu, Wencong, Li, Minghang, Liang, Shipan, Lu, Bing, Daigo, Ichiro, Mao, Shanjun, Hutchings, Graham J., Wang, Yong

Issue&Volume: 2026-07-15

Abstract: Plastic waste accumulation poses a global threat to both the environment and public health1,2,3. Although catalytic upcycling to value-added chemicals holds promise, its industrial adoption is hindered by additive-induced catalyst deactivation, feedstock heterogeneity, process inflexibility and limited economic viability4. Here we report a catalyst-free upcycling strategy that makes use of in situ generation of hydroxyl radicals at microdroplet interfaces5,6,7,8 to enable oxidative cleavage of diverse waste plastics—from polyolefins to rubbers—into carboxylic acids under mild conditions. By eliminating catalyst-dependent pathways, this approach circumvents key challenges of catalyst design and poisoning, while substantially lowering technical barriers and costs9,10. Our method achieves complete conversion of polyethylene (PE) with selectivity to short-chain diacids approaching 69% under relatively mild conditions and demonstrated broad applicability to mixed commercial plastics, with scalability demonstrated up to the 300-g scale. Radical intermediate analysis reveals the crucial role of H2O in mediating a unique oxidative degradation mechanism: sequential hydroxyl radical addition to alkyl radicals, distinct from classical liquid-phase aerobic oxidation of alkane11. This interfacial radical-mediated strategy enables sustainable polymer upcycling with minimal infrastructure. More broadly, this work provides a scalable blueprint for the first, to our knowledge, industrial implementation of microdroplet chemistry, with transformative implications for oxidation processes in organic acid synthesis and beyond.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10746-7

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10746-7

期刊信息

Nature：《自然》，创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：69.504

官方网址：http://www.nature.com/

投稿链接：http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html