Scientists Found a Cheap Platinum Alternative for Plastic Recycling

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Scientists have found a replacement for [music] platinum. It's 10 times cheaper and more effective. Hi. Today, we're talking about chemistry that could drastically reduce the cost of recycling plastic and carbon dioxide. Subscribe.

[00:00:13]This is truly changing the industry.

[00:00:15]Scientists from the University of Rochester have proven that tungsten carbide can become a full-fledged and inexpensive replacement for [music] platinum in key chemical processes, from recycling carbon dioxide to processing plastic. Previously, the problem was the unstable structure of the material. Most of its crystalline phases simply did not work as catalysts. A team led by Professor Mark Porosoff developed a method of temperature programmed carburization, which allows the desired B112C phase to be formed directly inside the reactor.

[00:00:45]It was this phase that demonstrated activity comparable to platinum in converting carbon dioxide into useful chemical compounds. And in a separate study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, it was found that when processing plastic, this material turned out to be 10 times more effective than platinum catalysts and significantly cheaper. To precisely control the processes, the researchers also implemented an optical method for real-time temperature measurement, eliminating errors of up to 100° that were typical of older approaches. If the technology can be scaled up, the chemical industry may be able to do away with platinum, and this is a huge step toward cheap, large-scale waste recycling.