Recently, the Green Energy team led by Prof. Xiao Rui and Prof. Zhang Huiyan from the School of Energy and Environment, SEU published a comment article titled “Designing zeolite catalysts for chemical recycling of plastics” in the prestigious academic journal Nature Reviews Materials. In this article, they addressed the increasingly severe global issue of efficient recycling and high-value utilization of plastic waste and other polymeric organic solid wastes. The team proposed a multiscale cooperative structural engineering strategy to construct more efficient mass transport pathways in zeolite catalysts. This approach aims to maximize the utilization of internal active sites and achieve efficient and targeted thermal conversion of organic solid wastes.

Currently, plastic pollution has become a global challenge that threatens both ecosystems and human health. Without effective intervention, the annual plastic waste entering rivers and oceans may reach up to 90 million tons by 2030, more than four times the amount in 2016. Traditional mechanical recycling technologies struggle to address the issue of recycling mixed and contaminated plastic waste, highlighting the urgent need to develop a new generation of efficient and sustainable recycling technologies. To achieve a closed-loop lifecycle for plastics and promote a circular economy, it is crucial to develop advanced catalytic chemical recycling technologies.

In the article, the team systematically identifies key bottlenecks faced by zeolites in the chemical recycling of plastic waste, such as hindered macromolecular diffusion and accelerated catalyst deactivation due to coke formation. They proposed a multi-scale structural engineering design approach to overcome the challenges of mass transfer and accessibility of active sites, including the development of novel catalytic systems such as ultra-large pore, hierarchical, and nanoscale zeolites to achieve precise control over thermal conversion pathways and product distribution. This approach can significantly enhance selectivity and stability. The article further highlights two critical breakthroughs for achieving efficient chemical recycling of plastics in the future: one is to reshape the reaction environment for macromolecules within the catalyst and extend catalyst lifetime by optimizing pore structures; the other to enhance conversion efficiency and energy utilization by coupling multiple forms of energy, such as microwave, plasma, and photocatalysis. On a broader scale, accelerating the performance validation of novel zeolite catalysts in complex waste systems and promoting the integration of multi-energy field synergies, coke management, and techno-economic assessments will become key pathways to advancing the high-value utilization of plastic waste and the transformation toward a circular economy.

Professors Xiao Rui, Zhang Huiyan, and Professor Roger Ruan from the University of Minnesota serve as the co-corresponding authors. Dr. Dai Leilei, a faculty member at SEU, is the first author and SEU is the first corresponding institution. In recent years, Professors Xiao and Zhang’s team has achieved significant advancements in the high-value utilization of biomass and organic solid waste. The team has innovatively integrates external energy fields,including photoelectric, microwave, and plasma, into traditional thermal conversion processes, achieving synergetic coupling of multiple energy sources. This approach enables high-value, zero-carbon or negative-carbon conversion of carbon-containing solid feedstocks under mild conditions. Their related research findings have been published in top-tier journals such asScience,Nature Chemistry Engineering,PNAS,Science Advances, andNature Communications, and several of their technologies have been successfully transitioned to industrial application.

Paper’s link:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00878-z#citeas