Photothermal Catalytic Recycling of Polyester Over Magnetic Ni−MnOx Nanocatalyst

Abstract The solar‐driven catalytic recycling of plastics has recently emerged as a new frontier in industry. Nevertheless, its large‐scale application requires the catalysts being capable of the strong absorption of visible and near‐infrared light, strengthened photothermal efficiency, high activity and selective toward target product, enhanced stability, as well as easy separation from the products. In this work, magnetic Ni−MnO x nanocatalyst (MN/C) is synthesized via the pyrolysis of metal‐organic framework (MOF) for the photothermal catalytic recycling of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to bis(2‐hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET). Detailed investigations demonstrate that the strong interaction between MnO x and Ni enables H 2 spill‐over from Ni to Mn species and electron transfer from Mn to Ni, where MnO x plays the active sites and Ni promotes the efficiency for photo‐to‐heat conversion, as a result of significantly enhanced photothermal catalytic performance. Consequently, PET is completely converted after photothermal recycling for 30 min (0.84 W cm −2 ) at 190 °C, with a BHET selectivity of ≈79%. Moreover, MN/C has been successfully applied for recycling PET from various sources. In addition to the promising performance, the low‐cost and easy magnetic separation of MN/C will further contribute to the sustainable recycling of plastics.