Technology · Chemically recyclable plastics
Who’s working on chemically recyclable plastics?
Chemical recycling turns waste polymers back into monomers, oils or new materials, and the hard parts are the catalysts, the separations and polymers designed to come apart on purpose. This page shows how much of that work the Helikon Research Graph holds and gives you a problem statement to run in Partner Search.
What the Helikon Research Graph holds on chemically recyclable plastics
4,100+
researchers
6,100+
publications
410
U.S. patents
Counts from the Helikon Research Graph on 9 October 2026; rounded down. Each figure is counted on its own, so they are not added together.
How these were counted
- Publications: papers whose title, author names or research topics match the keyword set below, the same text the Literature search reads.
- U.S. patents: granted U.S. patents whose text matches the keyword set and that carry at least one of these CPC subclasses: C08J, B29B, C08G, C10G. That is the Patents search with the CPC subclass field set.
- Researchers: people in the graph who authored a matching publication or are named inventors on a matching patent.
- Keyword set:
"chemical recycling" OR "plastic recycling" OR "polymer recycling" OR "plastic waste" OR "depolymerization" OR "plastics upcycling" OR "upcycling of plastics" OR "polyurethane recycling" OR "PET recycling" OR "pyrolysis of plastics" OR "recyclable polymers" OR "circular plastics" OR "solvolysis"
Try it on a real problem
Partner Search ranks researchers against a problem statement by what their publications, patents and profiles say. This one is ready to run; edit it to fit your project.
We recycle flexible polyurethane foam by glycolysis and need catalysts that cleave urethane bonds selectively at lower temperature. Looking for a group that can test them on post-consumer foam.Run this in Partner Search
Who’s working on this
Polymer chemistry, catalysis and chemical engineering groups at universities, national laboratory recycling programs, and company teams in chemicals, packaging and materials. The academic field is small next to the industrial interest in it.
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