
Greg Lu
Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Tech researching polymer recycling, upcycling plastic waste into high-value chemicals and lubricants.
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Aug 5, 2026
Junk plastic turns into high-value commodity with chemistry trick
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Nick Petrić HoweHOST
And so tell us, what is that idea? What did you want to do to, to not turn them into plastic, but to turn them into what else?

Greg LuGUEST
At first, we were thinking about if it's poly vinyl chloride, if we can take all the hydrocarbon background, so maybe we can use as a backbone for linkage.

Greg LuGUEST
And if we can attach something else to that, then we may be able to make a cross-linked PE version of, of material.

Greg LuGUEST
The motivation there is actually very simple, right? Because PVC is widely used in pipes, and nowadays, especially in Europe and United States, and there are more pipes made of crossing the PE or XPE.

Greg LuGUEST
So if we can take the old PVC pipes and make into XPE, that means we can still use them in piping and similar applications.

Greg LuGUEST
So we tried a lot of times to make them into crossing materials, and we made some materials.

Greg LuGUEST
It's some materials that potentially can be usable, but it's not the performance that we would like to be.
Nick Petrić HoweHOST
So what's the magic formula then? How would I take my PVC and turn it into a lubricant?