Mountanea Olga G, Skolia Elpida, Kokotos Christoforos G
Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis, 15771, Athens, Greece.
Chemistry. 2024 Aug 6;30(44):e202401588. doi: 10.1002/chem.202401588. Epub 2024 Jul 18.
Plastic pollution constitutes an evergrowing urgent environmental problem, since overaccumulation of plastic waste, arising from the immense increase of the production of disposable plastic products, overcame planet's capacity to properly handle them. Chemical upcycling of polystyrene constitutes a convenient method for the conversion of plastic waste into high-added value chemicals, suggesting an attractive perspective in dealing with the environmental crisis. We demonstrate herein a novel, easy-to-perform organocatalytic photoinduced aerobic protocol, which proceeds via synergistic indirect hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) catalysis under LED 390 nm Kessil lamps as the irradiation source. The developed method employs a BrCHCN-thioxanthone photocatalytic system and was successfully applied to a variety of everyday-life plastic products, leading to the isolation of benzoic acid after simple base-acid work up in yields varying from 23-49 %, while a large-scale experiment was successfully performed, suggesting that the photocatalytic step is susceptible to industrial application.
塑料污染构成了一个日益紧迫的环境问题，因为一次性塑料制品产量的大幅增加导致塑料垃圾过度积累，超出了地球妥善处理它们的能力。聚苯乙烯的化学升级循环是一种将塑料垃圾转化为高附加值化学品的便捷方法，为应对环境危机提供了一个有吸引力的前景。我们在此展示了一种新颖、易于操作的有机催化光致好氧反应方案，该方案在390纳米的Kessil LED灯作为辐照源的条件下，通过协同间接氢原子转移（HAT）催化进行。所开发的方法采用了溴代乙腈-噻吨酮光催化体系，并成功应用于各种日常生活塑料制品，经过简单的碱-酸后处理，以23%-49%的产率分离得到苯甲酸，同时成功进行了大规模实验，表明光催化步骤易于工业应用。
