Mixed plastics waste valorization through tandem chemical oxidation and biological funneling

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Mixed plastics waste represents an abundant and largely untapped feedstock for the production of valuable products. The chemical diversity and complexity of thesematerials, however, present major barriers to realizing this opportunity. In this work, we show that metal-catalyzed autoxidation depolymerizes comingled polymers into a mixture of oxygenated small molecules that are advantaged substrates for biological conversion. We engineer a robust soil bacterium, Pseudomonas putida, to funnel these oxygenated compounds into a single exemplary chemical product, either b-ketoadipate or polyhydroxyalkanoates. This hybrid process establishes a strategy for the selective conversion of mixed plastics waste into useful chemical products.
Funding was provided by the US Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO), and Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO). This work was performed as part of the BOTTLE Consortium and was supported by AMO and BETO under contract no. DE-AC36- 08GO28308 with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL),operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC. The BOTTLE Consortium includes members from MIT, funded under contract no. DE-AC36-08GO28308 with NREL. Contributions by S.S.S. were supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under award no. DEFG02-05ER15690.