{"id":179931,"date":"2026-08-20T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=179931"},"modified":"2026-08-13T14:10:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T12:10:35","slug":"scientists-turn-one-of-the-worlds-most-hated-plastics-into-premium-lubricant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/scientists-turn-one-of-the-worlds-most-hated-plastics-into-premium-lubricant\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists turn one of the world’s most hated plastics into premium lubricant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\"Researchers
Researchers in the Liu Lab examine samples of engine oil created from upcycled plastic waste. \u00a9 Luke Hayes for Virginia Tech.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Virginia Tech chemist and chemical engineer Guoliang \u201cGreg\u201d Liu and his lab have developed a process that converts the plastic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) into polyalphaolefin, a key component in lubricants such as engine oil.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Graduate
Graduate student Connor Thompson examines a sample of engine oil created from upcycled plastic waste in Greg Liu’s lab. In his left hand he holds toy plastic frogs similar to those that were used in the process. \u00a9 Luke Hayes for Virginia Tech.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Published Aug. 5 in the journal Nature<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0the research could help address two environmental challenges: recycling one of the world’s most difficult plastics and producing a valuable industrial material.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of its chlorine content and the variety of additives used by different manufacturers, PVC is among the hardest plastics to recycle. As a result, much of it ends up in landfills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, lubricants such as engine oil are environmentally costly to produce and are in growing demand. By converting discarded PVC into a key lubricant ingredient, the Liu lab’s process offers a potential way to reduce plastic waste while creating a high-value product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lubricants may go unnoticed, but they keep the world running smoothly. Engine oil is used in everything from lawn mowers and passenger vehicles to jet engines, making a reliable supply of lubricant components essential across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Professor
Researchers in the Liu Lab examine samples of engine oil created from upcycled plastic waste. \u00a9 Luke Hayes for Virginia Tech.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Liu lab has developed an effective process to possibly reverse an already alarming plastics pollution problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team takes the PVC you\u2019d find around your home in plumbing, window structures, and even your credit cards, and puts it into a solvent. Aluminum trichloride and alpha-olefins are added and the whole mixture is heated to 158 degrees Fahrenheit for three hours. The product extracted from the solvent is a relatively thick oil \u2014 lubricant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cNumber one, we have proved that it is feasible to use plastic waste to make high-performance lubricants. Number two, these lubricants are green, and they can meet the emerging needs for sustainability by the market,\u201d Liu<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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\"Ph.D
Graduate student Abby Civrello examines a sample of engine oil created from upcycled plastic waste in Greg Liu’s lab. \u00a9 Luke Hayes for Virginia Tech.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The idea for the process started with the team’s earlier publications,\u00a0featured in Scienc<\/em>e<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nature Sustainability<\/em><\/a>, about converting other types of plastic waste into surfactants such as soap and detergents. When that proved successful, researchers turned their attention to PVC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe want to help improve the recycling and upcycling of PVC,\u201d Liu<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To move the project forward, Liu assembled a team of graduate researchers. He tapped Eric Munyaneza Nuwayo, a doctoral student in the final year of his doctoral program, to lead the effort. Connor S. Thompson, a graduate student in the chemistry department, was initially focused on a different research project. When Liu proposed a new direction, Thompson embraced the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team also included Abby Civiello, a first-year graduate student whose contributions quickly made a substantial impact in the lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI often called them the three musketeers,\u201d Liu <\/strong>said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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\"Graduate
Graduate student Adrian DiMarco prepares a sample of engine oil created from upcycled plastic waste in Greg Liu’s lab. \u00a9 Luke Hayes for Virginia Tech.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Team members started by attempting to transform the PVC molecules into something different and playing around with the materials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe idea was simple. PVC, as one of the most activated forms of polyethylene, ought to be easily converted into some other molecules by replacing the chlorine atoms with other groups,\u201d Liu<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Despite the efforts, the material they produced was never something functional. It was always soft \u2014 a little gooey \u2014 and not as high-performing as they wanted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cOne day I realized \u2014 if this polymer is so gooey and so soft, why don’t I just keep breaking the polymer chains down to smaller segments that mimic lubricants?\u201d said Liu<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But as team members advanced the process, converting PVC into new molecules and testing the performance of the resulting product at Virginia Tech, Liu realized they had uncovered something far more promising than a recycling method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He turned to colleagues to further test the materials that the Liu lab had created. Liu sent samples of the oil to Ali Erdemir at Texas A&M University, and researchers there began testing and characterizing the materials. Liu also worked with William Goddard from Caltech on chemical computations. Virginia Tech colleague Xi Chen then aided in the economics and production perspective, working out models for how this oil could be produced on a large scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next step, said Liu, is making the lubricant even more sustainable and more accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cLubricants are the silent hero out there. We often don’t recognize they exist, but they are out there working quietly. We want to be able to produce the oil on a larger scale to reach more people in the world,\u201d Liu<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Original study<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

DOI 10.1038\/s41586-026-10867-z<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Virginia Tech chemist and chemical engineer Guoliang \u201cGreg\u201d Liu and his lab have developed a process that converts the plastic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) into polyalphaolefin, a key component in lubricants such as engine oil. Published Aug. 5 in the journal Nature,\u00a0the research could help address two environmental challenges: recycling one of the world’s most difficult […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":179937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, is among the most common plastics on the planet but also one of the hardest to recycle responsibly. In a new study in Nature, scientists describe a method to strip chlorine from PVC and convert the remaining material into synthetic lubricant-based oils that perform competitively with commercial products","footnotes":""},"categories":[17143],"tags":[10416,14783,14462,17140,15515],"supplier":[2530,394,656],"class_list":["post-179931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recycling","tag-circulareconomy","tag-lubricant","tag-plasticwaste","tag-polyvinylchloride","tag-upcycling","supplier-california-institute-of-technology","supplier-texas-am-university","supplier-virginia-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179931"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179941,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179931\/revisions\/179941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179931"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=179931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}