American Chemical Society podcast covers a greener source of ingredients for plastics

In Washington, the Chemical Society announced that the latest episode in the Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series highlights a first-of-its-kind process that can convert vegetable and animal fats and oils into a key ingredient for plastics.

A report by Douglas Neckers, Ph.D., and Maria Muro-Small in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, describes the use of “UV-C” light to change lard, tallow, olive oil, canola oil and waste canola cooking oil into olefins. Neckers says that this is the first report on use of this photochemical process to make olefins.

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