Solar-driven photocatalysis for recycling and upcycling plastics

The widespread use of plastics in modern societies generates huge amounts of plastic waste. With a view toward sustainability, researchers are now seeking strategies for recycling and upcycling plastic waste to valuable products. There is currently a significant amount of research on thermal catalytic recycling of plastics. These studies are mostly limited by high energy input, and the economic efficiency of the reaction process is not ideal. Photocatalysis and photothermal catalysis show superiority in terms of energy compared to traditional thermal catalysis. Recent researches about photocatalysis and photothermal catalysis to achieve chemical recycling and upcycling of plastics are reviewed, especially for the concept and application of three types of photothermal catalytic processes. Considering the most important efficiency, energy, and separation issues in plastic recycling, photothermal catalysis has a huge potential in the future field of plastic chemical recycling and upcycling.