Category: Science

A new brain organoid model lets researchers investigate the origins of autism.

Organoids are microtissue spheroids that are grown from stem cells and have a similar structure to real organs.

With them, and with a new method for modifying genes within these organoids using the CRISPR-Cas gene scissors, the researchers found out which genetic networks in which cell types in the brain are responsible for the development of autism.

“Our model offers unparalleled insight into one of the most complex disorders affecting the human brain and brings some much needed hope to clinical autism research,” says Jürgen Knoblich, professor and scientific director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and coauthor of the study in Nature.

This new method enabled the researchers to genetically modify the cells of a brain organoid in a mosaic-like fashion and then study them systematically. Specifically, the scientists altered one of 36 different genes associated with autism in each of the individual cells and studied the resulting effects. “We can see the consequences of every mutation in a single experiment, thus reducing the analysis time drastically when compared to conventional methods,” Knoblich says.

The new method was developed by researchers at the IMBA in Vienna, based on previous methods. In the current study, the group led by Barbara Treutlein, professor of quantitative developmental biology at ETH Zurich, incorporated the computer-assisted analysis of the raw research data: changing multiple genes in parallel in a human organoid and analyzing the resulting effects at the level of thousands of individual cells creates a vast amount of data.

In human disease research, organoids offer advantages over research using lab animals: unlike in lab animals, human genes and cells can be studied in organoids. These advantages are particularly significant in neuroscience, as the specific processes responsible for the development of the human cerebral cortex are unique to the human brain.

Neurodevelopmental disorders in humans are due in part to these human-specific processes in brain development. For example, many human genes that confer an increased risk for an autism spectrum disorder are genes that are critical for cortex development.

Previous studies have shown a causal link between certain gene mutations and autism. However, scientists still don’t understand how these mutations lead to defects in brain development and the expression of autism spectrum disorders. Due to the uniqueness of human brain development, the utility of animal models in this case is limited. “Only a human model of the brain like the one we used can reproduce the complexity and particularities of the human brain,” Knoblich says.

In their organoid model, the researchers were able to show that the genetic changes that are typical for autism affected mainly certain types of neural precursor cells. These are the founder cells from which neurons are created. “This suggests that molecular changes occur at an early stage in fetal brain development that ultimately lead to autism,” says Chong Li, a postdoc at IMBA and one of the study’s two lead authors. “Some cell types we identified are more vulnerable in autism and should receive more attention in future research.”

In addition, the scientists reveal that there are connections among the 36 genes they studied that confer a high risk for autism: “Using a program we developed, we were able to show that these genes are connected to each other through a gene regulation network, and that they interact with each other and have similar effects in the cells,” says Jonas Fleck, a doctoral student in Treutlein’s group and the other lead author of the study.

To test whether the results from the organoid model actually apply to autistic people, the researchers teamed up with clinicians at the Medical University of Vienna to produce brain organoids from two stem cell samples from affected individuals. They found that the organoid data closely matched clinical observations in the affected individuals.

The researchers emphasize that their technology for changing organoid cells in a mosaic-like fashion can also be used for organoids of other human organs and to study other diseases. This is a new research tool for rapidly examining a large number of disease-associated genes. “This technology thus helps to obtain relevant research results directly with human organoids in cell culture,” Treutlein says. “What’s more, human organoid disease models can also be used to test drug efficacy, which can help reduce animal testing.”

Source: ETH Zurich via IMBA

A study begins to address a longstanding question in condensed matter physics about whether disorder mimics or destroys the quantum liquid state in a prominent compound.

Quantum spin liquids are difficult to explain and even harder to understand.

To start, they have nothing to do with everyday liquids, like water or juice, but everything to do with special magnets and how they spin. In regular magnets, when the temperature drops, the spin of the electrons essentially freezes and forms a solid piece of matter. In quantum spin liquids, however, the spin of electrons doesn’t freeze—instead the electrons stay in a constant state of flux, as they would in a free-flowing liquid.

Quantum spin liquids are one of the most entangled quantum states conceived to date, and their properties are key in applications that scientists say could catapult quantum technologies. Despite a 50-year search for them and multiple theories pointing to their existence, no one has ever seen definitive evidence of this state of matter. In fact, researchers may never see that evidence because of the difficulty of directly measuring quantum entanglement, a phenomenon Albert Einstein famously termed “spooky action at a distance.” This is where two atoms become linked and able to exchange information no matter how far apart they are.

The mystery around quantum spin liquids has led to major questions about this exotic material in condensed matter physics that have to this point gone unanswered. But in a new paper in Nature Communications, a team of physicists begins to shed light on one of the most important questions, and does so by introducing a new phase of matter.

It all comes down to disorder.

Kemp Plumb, an assistant professor of physics at Brown University and senior author of the new study, explains that “all materials on some level have disorder” and that disorder has to do with the number of microscopic ways components of a system can be arranged. An ordered system, like a solid crystal, has very few ways to rearrange it, for instance, while a disordered system, like a gas, has no real structure to it.

In quantum spin liquids, disorder introduces discrepancies that essentially butt heads with the theory behind the liquids. One prevailing explanation was that when disorder is introduced, the material ceases to be a quantum spin liquid and instead is simply a magnet that’s in a state of disorder. “So, the big question was whether the quantum spin liquid state survives in the presence of disorder and if it does survive, how?” Plumb says.

The researchers addressed the question by using some of the brightest X-rays in the world to analyze magnetic waves in the compound they studied for tell-tale signatures that it’s a quantum spin liquid. The measurements showed that not only does the material not magnetically order (or freeze) at low temperatures, but that the disorder that’s present in the system doesn’t mimic or destroy the quantum liquid state.

It does significantly alter it, they find.

“The quantum liquid state sort of survives,” Plumb says. “It doesn’t do what you would expect a normal magnet to do where it just freezes. It stays in this dynamic state, but it’s like a de-correlated version of that dynamic state. Our interpretation right now is the quantum spin liquid is broken up into little puddles throughout the material.”

The findings essentially suggest that the material they looked at, which is one of the prime candidates to be a quantum spin liquid, does appear to be close to one, yet with an additional component. The researchers posit that it’s a quantum spin liquid that is disordered, making it a new phase of disordered matter.

“One thing that could have happened in this material was that it becomes a disordered version of a non-quantum spin liquid state, but our measurements would have would have told us that,” Plumb says. “Instead, our measurements show that it’s something very different.”

The results deepen understanding of how disorder affects quantum systems and how to account for it, which is important as these materials are explored for use in quantum computing.

The work is a part of a long line of research on exotic magnetic states from Plumb’s lab. The study focuses on the compound H3LiIr2O6, a material considered to best fit the archetype for being a special type of quantum spin liquid called a Kitaev spin liquid. Though known not to freeze at cold temperatures, H3LiIr2O6 is notoriously difficult to produce in a lab and is known to have disorder in it, muddying whether it was truly a spin liquid.

The researchers at Brown worked with collaborators at Boston College to synthesize the material and then used the powerful X-ray system at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to zap it with high-energy light. The light excites the magnetic properties in the compound, and the measurements that come from the waves it produces are a workaround for measuring entanglement, because the method offers a way of looking at how light influences the entire system.

The researchers hope next to continue to expand on the work by refining methods, the material itself and looking at different materials.

“The biggest thing going forward is something that we’ve been doing, which is continuing to search the really vast space of materials that the periodic table gives us,” Plumb says. “Now we have a deeper understanding of how the different combinations of elements that we put together can affect the interactions or give rise to different kinds of disorder that will affect the spin liquid. We have more guidance, which is really important because it truly is a really vast search space.”

Support for the work came from the Department of Energy, which operates the Argonne National Laboratory.

Source: Brown University

A high diversity of native tree species can help curb the intensity of invasive non-native tree species, research finds.

Human activity in hotspots of global trade, such as maritime ports, is linked to an increased likelihood of these invasions, report researchers in the journal Nature.

For centuries, human activity has intentionally or unintentionally driven the spread of plant species to areas far outside their native habitat. On average, about 10% of non-native species worldwide become invasive, often causing large ecological and economic consequences for affected regions.

For the first time, a global team of researchers has explored which regions on Earth are most vulnerable to non-native tree invasions. The study combines human and ecological factors to assess the drivers of tree invasion occurrence and severity across the globe.

The study reveals that proximity to human activity—especially maritime ports—emerges as a dominant factor driving the likelihood of invasion. Ports handle tons of goods including plants or seeds from all corners of the globe. The colonization pressure exerted by plant material is, therefore, very high in these regions of high human activity. The closer a forest is to a port, the higher the risk of invasion.

However, ecological factors determine the severity of invasion. Most importantly, native biodiversity helps to buffer the intensity of these invasions. In diverse forests, when most of the available niches are filled by native species, it becomes harder for non-native tree species to spread and proliferate.

The ecological strategy of the invading species is also important in determining which types of trees can invade in different regions. In harsh regions with extreme cold or dry conditions, the researchers found that non-native tree species must be functionally similar to native species to survive in these harsh environments. However, in locations with moderate conditions, non-native trees must be functionally dissimilar to native species in order to survive by functionally differentiating themselves, the non-native species avoid intense competition with native trees for important resources such as space, light, nutrients, or water.

Overall, the study highlights the importance of native tree diversity in helping to limit the severity of these invasions. “We found that native biodiversity can limit the severity or intensity of non-native tree species invasions worldwide,” says Camille Delavaux, lead author of the study. “This means that the extent of invasion can be mitigated by promoting greater native tree diversity.”

The findings have direct relevance for efforts to manage ecosystems in the fight against biodiversity loss across the globe. “By identifying regions that are most vulnerable to invasion, this analysis is useful for designing effective strategies to protect global biodiversity,” says ETH Zurich professor Thomas Crowther.

The findings are significant for biodiversity conservation efforts worldwide. One key goal of the global biodiversity framework adopted at COP 15 in Montreal in 2022 is to prevent the establishment and spread of potentially invasive species. This global analysis of non-native tree species aims to contribute to the findings of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which is expected to highlight the substantial impact of invasive species on biodiversity loss in their upcoming status report.

“This global understanding of non-native tree distributions can help countries to prioritize decision making in efforts to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity,” Crowther emphasizes.

Source: ETH Zurich

A new study identifies a potential way to remove microplastics from water with fungi.

“Although fungal pelletization has been studied for algae harvesting and wastewater treatment in the past decade, to the best of our knowledge, it has not yet been applied for the removal of microplastics from an aqueous environment,” says Susie Dai, an associate professor in the plant pathology and microbiology department at Texas A&M University. “This study examines their use for that purpose.”

Microplastics, tiny plastic particles resulting from commercial product development and the breakdown of larger plastics, have gained increasing attention in recent years due to their potential harm to the ecosystem. With the continual increase of global plastic production, pollution from this persistent waste contaminant group derived from synthetic polymers presents a significant environmental challenge.

While the health risks posed by submicrometer microplastics to humans are not yet fully understood, those studying them generally believe the overall risk associated with submicrometer microplastics—those less than a micron in a specified measurement—is higher than that of larger plastics. They hypothesize this is due in large measure to their greater potential for long-range transport and ability to more easily penetrate the cells of living organisms.

“Previous studies have indicated that submicrometer microplastics can easily travel considerable distances in the environment, infiltrating plant root cell walls,” says study leader and postdoctoral scientist Huaimin Wang. “They have even been shown to have been transported into plant fruiting bodies and human placenta.”

Besides microplastics generated from direct human activity such as cosmetic and industrial production, nanoplastics—synthetic polymer particulates ranging from 1 nanometer to 1 micrometer in diameter—can also be generated from the fragmentation or degradation of larger plastics.

A significant portion of microplastics generated from human activities end up in sewage and wastewater treatment plants. While these plants can remove the vast majority of them, many of the submicrometer particles are unfiltered.

“The microplastics and nanoplastics removed after activated sludge treatment can be further removed by additional conventional methods such as coagulation, disk filters, and membrane filtration,” Dai says. “But enriched microplastics still pose a waste-management challenge.”

Unfortunately, she says, some disposal methods like landfill interment or incineration are not environmentally favorable for reintroducing these back into the natural carbon cycle.

For the study, three fungal strain candidates were chosen based on their speed of growth, dye degradation, spore production, and pellet formation. Two were newly isolated white rot fungi strains.

The study yielded encouraging findings on removing polystyrene and polymethyl methacrylate microplastics and nanoplastics—ranging from 200 nanometers to 5 micrometers in the aquatic environment—using these isolated fungal strains.

“These types of microplastics and nanoplastics are among the most common,” Dai says.

The three strains showed a high rate of microplastic removal and exhibited potential microplastic assimilation. “The microplastics attach to the surface of the fungal biomass, which makes it easier to remove them from water as part of the pellet,” Dai explains.

Wang says that due to the unique capacity of the selected white rot fungal strains to form pellets, they should be suitable for remediating microplastics. “They may also have the potential for use in upgrading wastewater treatment plants and as a cost-effective means to further remove microplastics and minimize the pollution by plastics in natural water bodies,” he says.

The current study using fungus to remove microplastics is compatible with Dai’s previous research using fungus to remediate PFAS or “forever chemicals” in the environment.

“Fungi have unique environmental applications due to their diversity and robustness,” Dai says. “They have also been useful in our ability to develop a novel bioremediation technology for these chemicals, which can threaten human health and ecosystem sustainability.”

PFAS are used in many applications ranging from food wrappers and packaging, to dental floss, fire-fighting foam, nonstick cookware, textiles, and electronics.

Dai’s new technology uses a plant-derived material to absorb the PFAS and dispose of them by means of microbial fungi that literally eat them.

The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Northern Research Station also participated in the study, which appears in Bioresource Technology Reports.

Source: Texas A&M University

Our research has shown those factors certainly contribute—there’s no doubt, for instance, that regulation prevents a ton of new construction. But even if we fix that, we still have what we call a “market structure” problem or, essentially, a rising market concentration in homebuilding.

Let me explain.

Ever since the Great Recession, smaller builders have had a hard time surviving in the market. Many were kicked out—they went bankrupt. Large, powerful developers were more likely to weather the storm and survive. Consequently, they gained power and started to dominate building in many regions, in some cases building 60%, 70%, or even 80% of new housing construction. One of my papers, “Fewer Players, Fewer Homes,” offers examples, some from the analyses of outside research groups and others from our own. But to give you a sense, consider, for instance, that 100 of the largest homebuilders in the US now account for about half of all new single-family home sales, up from just over a third decades ago. Most of these gains come from increases in the shares of only two homebuilders—D.R. Horton and Lennar—which, together, build almost as much as the other eight firms in the top 10 combined.

Another interesting statistic: Despite the strong recovery in home prices after the Great Recession, the number of builders has declined 65% since 2007, right around the time the financial crisis started.

Researchers have created a “brainless” soft robot that can navigate complex and dynamic environments.

The same team previously created a soft robot that could navigate simple mazes without human or computer direction.

“In our earlier work, we demonstrated that our soft robot was able to twist and turn its way through a very simple obstacle course,” says Jie Yin, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University and co-corresponding author of a study in Science Advances.

“However, it was unable to turn unless it encountered an obstacle. In practical terms this meant that the robot could sometimes get stuck, bouncing back and forth between parallel obstacles.

“We’ve developed a new soft robot that is capable of turning on its own, allowing it to make its way through twisty mazes, even negotiating its way around moving obstacles. And it’s all done using physical intelligence, rather than being guided by a computer.”

Physical intelligence refers to dynamic objects—like soft robots—whose behavior is governed by their structural design and the materials they are made of, rather than being directed by a computer or human intervention.

As with the earlier version, the new soft robots are made of ribbon-like liquid crystal elastomers. When the robots are placed on a surface that is at least 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit), which is hotter than the ambient air, the portion of the ribbon touching the surface contracts, while the portion of the ribbon exposed to the air does not. This induces a rolling motion; the warmer the surface, the faster the robot rolls.

However, while the previous version of the soft robot had a symmetrical design, the new robot has two distinct halves. One half of the robot is shaped like a twisted ribbon that extends in a straight line, while the other half is shaped like a more tightly twisted ribbon that also twists around itself like a spiral staircase.

This asymmetrical design means that one end of the robot exerts more force on the ground than the other end. Think of a plastic cup that has a mouth wider than its base. If you roll it across the table, it doesn’t roll in a straight line—it makes an arc as it travels across the table. That’s due to its asymmetrical shape.

“The concept behind our new robot is fairly simple: because of its asymmetrical design, it turns without having to come into contact with an object,” says Yao Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher and the paper’s first author.

“So, while it still changes directions when it does come into contact with an object—allowing it to navigate mazes—it cannot get stuck between parallel objects. Instead, its ability to move in arcs allows it to essentially wiggle its way free.”

The researchers demonstrated the ability of the asymmetrical soft robot design to navigate more complex mazes—including mazes with moving walls—and fit through spaces narrower than its body size. The researchers tested the new robot design on both a metal surface and in sand.

“This work is another step forward in helping us develop innovative approaches to soft robot design—particularly for applications where soft robots would be able to harvest heat energy from their environment,” Yin says.

The National Science Foundation supported the work.

Source: NC State

Older adults are often left out of decisions surrounding technology related to their care, such as location trackers and companion robots, new research finds.

Clara Berridge, associate professor of social work at the University of Washington, studies issues facing older adults, in particular technology that can support care or a person’s ability to live independently.

She recently published two articles related to older adults and technology. In articles in the Journal of Elder Policy and Frontiers in Psychology, Berridge explores older adults’ opinions of companion robots, finding that such devices may not provide the blanket comfort or utility that creators presume—and that older adults have an interest in data protections.

“Older adults have been learning about, adapting, and integrating technology solutions into their lives for longer than anyone,” Berridge says. “Older adults’ feelings about technologies on offer to them for care and living at home, and their creative use, resistance, and other interactions with these technologies should be taken seriously.

“So much research, time, and money has been focused on pushing acceptance of technologies that could be better spent enabling control by older adults over direction, purpose, and design.”

Here, Berridge explains the importance of involving older adults in the design and use of technology:

A new set of national guidelines recommends that cancer patients use mind-body techniques—particularly mindfulness meditation—to ease anxiety and depression during and after treatment.

Yoga, hypnosis, acupuncture, and music therapy were also among the “integrative oncology” interventions that showed strong enough evidence to recommend to patients.

Other methods, such as inhaling lavender essential oils during cancer-related medical procedures, came with weaker recommendations due to less compelling data—but still would do no harm and may provide some benefit, researchers say.

Alissa Huston, an associate professor of medicine and hematology/oncology at the University of Rochester Medical Center and oncologist at its Wilmot Cancer Institute, was part of a national team that reviewed scientific data and made recommendations based on clinical study outcomes.

The guidelines appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“It’s so exciting to have these tools to utilize—and to have the scientific evidence to back up what works for anxiety and depression in people with cancer,” says Huston.

“Now, we have evidence-based guidelines for mind-body therapies, similar to what we use to guide other treatments for cancer,” Huston says. “This will help our patients with decision-making, and we can educate them about what is effective and safe.”

More than 40% of individuals with cancer report anxiety or depression associated with the diagnosis and may suffer a reduced quality of life, Huston says.

She and coauthors reviewed 110 studies on integrative oncology interventions. The Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) convened the expert panel.

One interesting outcome of the study: Supplements were not recommended.

Although many cancer patients take supplements for anxiety, Huston says, scientific data is inconclusive and some studies show they can be unsafe due to harmful interactions with cancer medications. She suggests that patients talk candidly with their physicians about all vitamins and supplements they are taking.

Source: University of Rochester

Treating newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes patients with the drug semaglutide may drastically reduce or even eliminate their need for injected insulin, a small study shows.

Semaglutide is sold under the trade names Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus.

“Our findings from this admittedly small study are, nevertheless, so promising for newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes patients that we are now absolutely focused on pursuing a larger study for a longer period of time,” says Paresh Dandona, a professor in the department of medicine at the University at Buffalo and senior author of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers studied a total of 10 patients at the Clinical Research Center in the Division of Endocrinology at the University at Buffalo from 2020 to 2022, all of whom had been diagnosed in the past three to six months with type 1 diabetes. The mean HbA1c level (an individual’s average blood sugar level over 90 days) at diagnosis was 11.7, far above the American Diabetes Association’s HbA1c recommendation of 7 or below.

The patients were treated first with a low dose of semaglutide while also taking mealtime (bolus) insulin and basal (background) insulin. As the study continued, semaglutide dosing was increased while mealtime insulin was reduced in order to avoid hypoglycemia.

“Within three months, we were able to eliminate all of the mealtime insulin doses for all of the patients,” says Dandona, “and within six months we were able to eliminate basal insulin in 7 of the 10 patients. This was maintained until the end of the 12-month follow-up period.”

During that time, the patients’ mean HbA1c fell to 5.9 at six months and 5.7 at 12 months.

For more than a decade, Dandona has been interested in how drugs developed for type 2 diabetes might be utilized in treating type 1 diabetes as well.

He and his colleagues were the first to study how liraglutide, another drug for type 2 diabetes, might work in patients with type 1 diabetes in a study he published in 2011.

“As we extended this work, we found that a significant proportion of such diabetics still have some insulin reserve in the beta cells of their pancreas,” Dandona explains. “This reserve is most impressive at the time of diagnosis, when 50% of the capacity is still present. This allowed us to hypothesize that semaglutide, which works through stimulation of insulin secretion from the beta cell, could potentially replace mealtime insulin administration.”

From the outset, the goal of the current study was to see if semaglutide treatment could be used to replace mealtime insulin, thereby reducing the insulin dosage, improving glycemic control, reducing the HbA1c, and eliminating potentially dangerous swings in blood sugar and hypoglycemia.

The most common side effects for patients were nausea and vomiting as well as appetite suppression, which led a number of patients to experience weight loss, an outcome that Dandona says is generally an advantage since 50% of patients with type 1 diabetes in the US are overweight or obese.

“As we proceeded with the study, we found that even the dose of basal insulin could be reduced or eliminated altogether in a majority of these patients,” he says.

“We were definitely surprised by our findings and also quite excited. If these findings are borne out in larger studies over extended follow-up periods, it could possibly be the most dramatic change in treating type 1 diabetes since the discovery of insulin in 1921.”

Source: University of Buffalo

Sodium chloride—table salt—can outperform much more expensive materials being explored to help recycle plastics, a new study shows.

“This is really exciting,” says Muhammad Rabnawaz, an associate professor in Michigan State University’s School of Packaging. “We need simple, low-cost solutions to take on a big problem like plastics recycling.”

Although plastics have historically been marketed as recyclable, the reality is that nearly 90% of plastic waste in the United States ends up in landfills, in incinerators, or as pollution in the environment.

One of the reasons plastics have become so disposable is that the materials recovered from recycling aren’t valuable enough to spend the money and resources required to get them.

According to the team’s projections, table salt could flip the economics and drastically reduce costs when it comes to a recycling process known as pyrolysis, which works through a combination of heat and chemistry.

Although Rabnawaz expected salt to have an impact because of how well it conducts heat, he was still surprised by how well it worked. It outperformed expensive catalysts—chemicals designed to spur reactions along—and he believes his team has just started tapping into its potential.

Pyrolysis is a process that breaks down plastics into a mixture of simpler, carbon-based compounds, which come out in three forms: gas, liquid oil, and solid wax.

That wax component is often undesirable, Rabnawaz says, yet it can account for more than half of products, by weight, of current pyrolysis methods. That’s even when using catalysts, which are helpful, but they often can be toxic or prohibitively expensive to be applied in managing waste plastics.

Platinum, for example, has very attractive catalytic properties, which is why it’s used in catalytic converters to reduce harmful emissions from cars. But it’s also very pricey, which is why thieves steal catalytic converters.

Although bandits are unlikely to rob platinum-based materials from a sweltering pyrolysis reactor, attempting to recycle plastics with those catalysts would still require a hefty investment—millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars. And current catalysts aren’t efficient enough to justify that cost, Rabnawaz says. “No company in the world has that kind of cash to burn.”

In earlier work, Rabnawaz and his team showed that copper oxide and table salt worked as catalysts to break down a plastic known as polystyrene. Now, they’ve shown table salt alone can eliminate the wax byproduct in the pyrolysis of polyolefins—polymers that account for 60% of plastic waste.

“That first paper was important, but I didn’t get excited until we worked with polyolefins,” Rabnawaz says. “Polyolefins are huge, and we just outperformed expensive catalysts.”

When using table salt as a catalyst to pyrolyze polyolefins, the team produced mostly liquid oil containing hydrocarbon molecules similar to what’s found in diesel fuel, Rabnawaz says. Another perk of the salt catalyst, the researchers showed, is it can be reused.

“You can recover salt by simply washing the obtained oil with water,” Rabnawaz says.

The researchers also showed that table salt aided in the pyrolysis of metallized plastic films, which are commonly used in food packaging, like potato chip bags, which isn’t currently recycled.

Although pure table salt didn’t outperform a platinum-alumina catalyst the team also tested with metallized films, the results were similar, and the salt is a fraction of the cost.

Rabnawaz stressed, however, that metallized films, while useful, are inherently problematic. He envisions a world where such films are no longer needed, which is why his team is also working to replace them with more sustainable materials. The team will also continue working to further its pyrolysis project.

For instance, the researchers have yet to fully characterize the gas products of pyrolysis with table salt. And Rabnawaz believes the team can improve this approach so that the liquid products contain chemicals with more valuable applications than being burned as fuel.

Still, the early returns of the new table salt tactics are encouraging. Based on a preliminary economic analysis supported by the US Department of Agriculture and MSU AgBioResearch, the team estimated a commercial pyrolysis reactor could triple its profits just by adding salt.

The study is published in Advanced Sustainable Systems. The research was partially supported by Conagra Brands, a consumer packaged goods company.

Source: Matt Davenport for Michigan State University