Engineers used artificial intelligence to find out what they say could be a fresh way to expedite the process of breaking down plastic.
As explained in a new paper published in the journal Nature, a research team from the University of Texas at Austin modified an enzyme to break down the individual components of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a commonly disposed plastic that accounts for a staggering 12 percent of waste worldwide.
The modified enzyme also reduced the period it takes for the plastic to degrade from months to a just single week.
Depolymerization, is the process that has the added benefit of allowing the broken-down monomers to be reconstituted back into virgin PET plastic, a potentially revolutionary way of recycling the massive amounts of plastic waste people have disposed. The process is not industrialized so far.
The fact that PET plastic can be turned back into its pure form is a game changer. Unlike traditional recycling, depolymerization can recycle a plastic and keep its original traits.