Plastic bags to gasoline: Molten salts crack polyethylene into real fuels

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a method to convert a commonly discarded hydrocarbon polymer into gasoline- and diesel-like fuels. The team has applied for a patent for the discovery, which treats polyethylene—the stuff of white cutting boards and shopping bags—with aluminum chloride-containing molten salts that serve as both solvent and catalyst. The results are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.