People

Get to know the team members of Mechano-Catalysis. 

Back row: Valeryia Frolova (MSc.), Roos van Elk (MSc.), Laura Seidling (PhD), Dr. Ina Vollmer (Assistant Prof), Sarah Schmidt (PhD), Dr. Laëtitia Delarue, Duco Tabor (BSc.)
Front row:   Dr. Laurie Overtoom (PD), Joey van Brakel (BSc.), Alex Croes (BSc.), Akhilesh Goel (intern), Julie Ansing (BSc.), Sietse Averesch (BSc.), Simone Mosk (PhD), Dr. Joshua Vauloup (PD)

Principal Investigator

  • dr. I. (Ina) Vollmer

    Associate Professor
    Phone: 06 51 021 002

    Address

    Universiteitsweg 99
    3584CG Utrecht
  • My team focuses on developing pathways for the low temperature, selective chemical recycling of plastic waste to chemical building blocks like aromatics, carboxylic acids and monomers.

Postdocs

  • Dr. Laëtitia Delarue

    Postdoc
  • In this project, mechanical forces are used instead of heat by employing ball milling with catalytically modified balls. This method has proven efficient on a laboratory scale (a few grams) and is being upscaled in this Demonstrator project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to the kilogram scale.

  • Dr. Joshua Vauloup

    Postdoc
  • The close-ring depolymerization of polyamide-6 is a promising method to recover a pure monomer. However, the current processes require high temperatures and/or expensive catalysts to promote this reaction. Could the mechano-catalytic route be more viable?

  • Dr. Laurie Overtoom

    Postdoc
  • Beyond the pure mechano-catalytic cleavage of hydrocarbon chains to recover the virgin monomer, it is also possible to utilise industrial oxidation chemistries to generate higher value products, such as dicarboxylic acids, from waste PE and PP. This project seeks to combine these strategies by using traditional and photo-catalytically activated oxidising agents to generate products of interest under mild temperature conditions inside the ball mill reactor.

PhDs

  • Sarah Schmidt

  • I am developing a new catalytic reactive extrusion process in collaboration with Coperion GmbH, Ruhr-University Bochum, and Maastricht University. By leveraging mechanical shear for polymer degradation at lower temperatures, we aim to enhance catalyst efficiency, reduce energy consumption, and obtain higher-value products. Through the integration of spectroscopy and process optimization, we aim to establish a cost-effective and sustainable chemical recycling method that improves plastic waste utilization and reduces its environmental impact.

  • Simone Mosk

  • This project is part of the ERC StG project IMPACT. In order to investigate the processes that occur inside the ball mill in operando, I develop a special ball mill chamber to allow for the use of spectroscopic techniques such as Raman, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy in combination with the use of radical and spin trapping compounds.

  • Laura Seidling

  • This project is part of the ERC StG project IMPACT and investigates a new recycling approach that involves mechanochemical impact to cleave the polyolefins into shorter-chain hydrocarbons. The use of heterogeneous catalysts enhances selectivity, enabling the efficient conversion of plastic waste into value-added chemicals.

Students

  • Roos van Elk

    MSc student
  • Advanced methods for the functionalization of grinding spheres are explored with the aim of producing more stable coatings for the mechano-catalytic depolymerization of polyolefins. By enhancing the stability of these coatings, the catalytic efficiency is expected to be more consistent over extended milling times.

  • Valeryia Frolova

    MSc. student
  • PVC recycling rate is drastically low due to its high chloride content (57 wt.%), which contributes to generating corrosive/toxic degradation compounds during thermal processes. The mechanochemical dechlorination route of PVC is promising to lower the formation of low-value hazard compounds, while producing a more valuable feedstock.

  • Jamie Bol

    MSc. student
  • Standard TGA curves fail to capture chain cleavages that occur prior to volatilization. This project addresses this gap by correlating GPC-derived molecular weight distributions with TGA experiments to quantify early-stage scission. The aim is to investigate catalytic effects on these initial reactions, ultimately facilitating the development of a more comprehensive kinetic framework for the catalytic cracking of polypropylene.

Alumni

  • Dr. Francesco Mattarozzi

    Postdoc
  • I developed heterogeneous catalysts to tune the selectivity of the mechano-catalytic recycling of polylactic acid (PLA) to value-added chemicals.

  • Dr. Adrian Hergesell

    PhD
  • I am developing a new recycling approach for polyolefin waste. We use mechanochemical impact, rather than thermal activation, to cleave polyolefins and transform them into shorter-chain hydrocarbons. Adding heterogeneous catalysts will allow us to tune the selectivity and produce value-added chemicals from plastic waste.