Production of Long Chain Alcohols from Waste Polyethylene Pyrolysis Oil Using a One-Pot Hydroboration–Oxidation Process

Abstract

We provide a new method to source fatty alcohols from poly(ethylene) (PE) pyrolysis oil. To this end, we have developed a new one-pot process to obtain fatty alcohols from a mixture of long chain alkenes and alkanes (C10–C20) that is obtained from pyrolyzed PE. Hydroboration–oxidation methods with and without an isomerization step were investigated for converting all types of alkenes present in the PE pyrolysis oil to primary alcohols only, following the anti-Markovnikov rule. Our process showed 91%–98% conversion of the alkenes to alcohols in a one-pot reaction at a scale of 50 g at low temperature (10–25 °C) under ambient pressure. In addition, the efficiency of the process was confirmed by testing several types of pyrolysis oil derived from commercial waste PE where alcohol recovery reached 83%–92% based on the amount of alkenes in the PE pyrolysis oil. As fatty alcohols are commodity chemicals, our study can pave the way for converting waste plastics into high value chemicals, a welcome energy and materials saving shortcut to the specialty chemicals market.