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Chlorine-containing plastic is one of the widely used plastics in daily life. Discarded chlorine-containing plastics are extremely stable. Not only are they difficult to self-degrade, but they also release a variety of toxic chlorine-containing organic matter during the traditional high-temperature thermal degradation process, which harms the ecological environment and human health.

Recently, the team led by Huang Fuqiang, chief researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, adopted a new room-temperature dechlorination method to directly convert chlorine-containing waste plastics into a variety of high-value-added new materials, successfully achieving efficient and harmless upgrading and recycling, which can be widely used in green environmental protection, new energy storage, medical devices, wearable devices, and other fields. The relevant results were recently published in Nature Reviews: Method Introduction, a subsidiary of Nature magazine.

"The earth has accumulated hundreds of millions of tons of waste plastics, and it is still being produced at an alarming rate every year. We hope to develop a new upgrading and recycling method that is both cost-effective and environmentally friendly, and to dispose of chlorine-containing waste plastics in a green and efficient manner." Huang Fuqiang said.

The traditional process uses incineration to treat chlorine-containing waste plastics, which will produce carbon dioxide and chlorine-containing toxic gases during the degradation process. Upgrading and recycling uses a new room-temperature dechlorination method to directly remove all chlorine elements from waste plastics, ultimately converting waste plastics into various high-value-added new materials.