Join Gregg Beckham, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), as he kicks off the first lecture as part of the Department of Chemical Engineering’s popular Distinguished Seminar Series.

Title:
Process development for plastics recycling and redesign

Abstract:
The accumulation of plastics waste in landfills and leakage into the natural environment represents an urgent, global pollution challenge, and new processes are critically needed to deal with this massive and diverse waste stream, with the intention to ultimately enable materials circularity. This talk will review our efforts in (1) the development of recycling processes that focus on depolymerization of today’s waste plastics into new building blocks and (2) new bio-based polymers that are designed for circularity. The importance of techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment will be emphasized as a means to identify impactful process innovations.

Speaker biography:
Gregg T. Beckham is a Senior Research Fellow and Group Leader at NREL. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT. He currently leads and works with an interdisciplinary team at NREL on the development of green processes and products in the areas of biomass conversion and plastics upcycling.

To book:
This event is by calendar invite only. If you are interested in attending, please email chemeng.comms@imperial.ac.uk.

Attendance type:
In-person encouraged.