Prof. Xiao ‘Mattthew’ Hu will give a talk entitled "Polymer Circularity: Challenges, Opportunities and Recent Case Studies".
All are welcomed to join. Please register here (contact form) if you wish to attend the lecture.

Speaker : Prof. Xiao ‘Mattthew’ Hu
(Professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore（南洋理工大学）)

Abstract

Polymer Circularity: Challenges, Opportunities and Recent Case Studies

Xiao ‘Mattthew’ Hu^{1, 2
1}School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
²Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

This presentation starts with a brief introduction. The overall demand, current reality, and gaps between academia and industry concerning plastic waste will be highlighted. Both challenges and opportunities will be discussed along with recent case studies. First, we proposed a controlled partial depolymerization (CPD) approach to convert polyester, such as PET, into oligomers, or oPET with well-defined molecular structures. These oligomers can either find direct applications as functional materials or be used as building blocks for covalent adaptive network (CAN) polymers, e.g., vitrimers. Most recently, the same CPD approach was further adapted to tackle perhaps one of the most difficult challenges, i.e., the separation of dissimilar and immiscible polymer mixtures. As an example, model PP and PET mixtures and those in laminated plastic packaging films are studied. In both case, PP/PET mixtures in nearly equal percentage are effective separated as PP and oPET. Moreover, this new approach was found also effective to drive the circularity of blended fibre textile/fashion waste especially for cellulose recovery. An outlook for the plastic waste challenge and towards increasing level of circularity will also be discussed.

Short Biography

Xiao Matthew HU is a professor at Nanyang Technological University NTU) in Singapore, a founding member of its Materials Science and Engineering since 1992. He is the Director of the Environmental Chemistry and Materials Programme (ECMP) at the Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute. He was also the Founding Co-Director of the RGE-NTU Sustainable Textile Research Centre (SusTex) (Now serving as its scientific advisor). He gained his BEng from Tsinghua Universityc, MSc and PhD from the University of Manchester. He is a Councilor of the Pacific Polymer Federation (PPF) and served as its President in 2018 and 2019. Currently he serves as the President of the Federation of Asian Polymer Societies (FAPS). Professor Hu is the scientific advisor for several companies including two tech startups Atera Water Pte Ltd and HyDrGel Pte Ltd. He also served as a member of the Innovation Committee of Taiwan Textile Research Institute (TTRI). He is an editor of Polymer (Elsevier). His group conducts use-inspired, cross-disciplinary, collaborative and translational research by studying the underlying principles for new materials design, synthesis, processing and fabrication for targeted end uses. His latest passion in the past decade has been on tackling challenges concerning polymers for environmental and water technologies, polymer circularity, and nanotechnology to enable a more sustainable agriculture. He has contributed to more than 400 international journal papers and holds 30 IP inventions, some of which have been licensed to companies towards commercialization.