PlastChicks

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Mercedes Landazuri
If you've got a question, the voices of resin are here. Oh, PlastChicks.

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Lynzie Nebel
PlastChicks is an SPE-sponsored podcast. Hey, Friday.

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Mercedes Landazuri
Happy Friday.

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Lynzie Nebel
It’s Friday. It's October. The sun is shining.

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Mercedes Landazuri
In some places.

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Katrina Knauer
I was going to say it snowed here yesterday.

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Mercedes Landazuri
So I'm Mercedes Landazuri.

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Lynzie Nebel
And I’m Lynzie Nebel.

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Mercedes Landazuri
And with our powers combined, we are PlastChicks, the voices of resin.

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Lynzie Nebel
Look at us. All our resin. Yeah.

00;00;46;02 - 00;00;59;05
Mercedes Landazuri
So we have a podcast sponsored by Society of Plastics Engineers, SPE-Inspiring Plastics Professionals. We both work in the industry and I specifically work in color, Lynzie.

00;00;59;05 - 00;01;04;07
Lynzie Nebel
And I work in biopharma, injection molding, all that good stuff.

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Mercedes Landazuri
Brag, brag, brag..

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Lynzie Nebel
Yeah, that's a brag.

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Mercedes Landazuri
And we decided to start this podcast a couple of years ago. We met in the industry association, and we felt like we stood out because we were a little bit younger and a little bit more female than a lot of the people in the room. And we wanted to amplify those voices and just the voices of people doing exciting things in our industry.

00;01;35;03 - 00;01;53;25
Mercedes Landazuri
So this podcast is not just meant for people within the plastics industry, but people outside of it to learn more. And we have, we welcome guests on every month. The podcast is released by SPE the first Friday of every month. And you can get it anywhere you listen to your podcasts.

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Lynzie Nebel
And follow us on social media or on Instagram or on LinkedIn.

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Lynzie Nebel
And we say and we'll probably say it till the end of time that we're going to be on TikTok, but we'll do it once. It's super, super uncool. That's when we’ll get on.

00;02;09;19 - 00;02;20;08
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah, I hear GIFs are now or GIFs are now uncool. So I'm glad that that wave, I'm glad it was that wave because I could never figure out how you are actually supposed to say them.

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Lynzie Nebel
Yeah, well, you know, you just don't say it. You just do it.

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Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah.

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Mercedes Landazuri
I think I've already sent you one today, Lynzie.

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Lynzie Nebel
You have.

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Mercedes Landazuri
At least.

00;02;30;15 - 00;02;50;03
Mercedes Landazuri
So uncool. So uncool. So with us today, we have our guest, Dr. Kat Knauer. She is program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and CTO of the BOTTLE Consortium. And she has multiple patents. How many how many patents are you? Are you on?

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Katrina Knauer
I'm not that super, super cool yet. I only have about four patents.

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Lynzie Nebel
Only four.

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Katrina Knauer
I only have four in that space.

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Lynzie Nebel
But I think you’re beating Mercedes and I collectively by four.

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Mercedes Landazuri
By four. Yeah.

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Lynzie Nebel
Yeah. So.

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Mercedes Landazuri
So thank you so much for joining us today. Dr.. We really appreciate it. I think I met you. I really think, I think I met you virtually in the 2021 RACE Recycling and Circular Economy Conference that SPE worked on, because I'm a member of the Recycling Division, and I was really impressed with you and was hoping that we could have you on the podcast some day. And several months later, here we are.

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Katrina Knauer
Yeah, I was excited to get the invitation. Happy to be here. Also, I can clear up one thing for you guys that apparently the man who invented the GIF passed away last year and on his deathbed said the correct pronunciation is GIF (Jiff). And he wants people to keep saying it that way. And I thought that was just a fascinating way to go.

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Mercedes Landazuri
So. All right.

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Lynzie Nebel
Yeah.

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Mercedes Landazuri
That’s why they’re going out of favor, right?

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Lynzie Nebel
Even when he was still alive, he was keeping the cool going.

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Katrina Knauer
Yep.

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Katrina Knauer
So just a little bit of background history for you guys there. So now I'm just like, all right, I'm going to respect his honor, and I will call it GIF and.

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Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah

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Lynzie Nebel
Have to continue the legacy.

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Katrina Knauer
Yes, exactly.

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Lynzie Nebel
I love it.

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Mercedes Landazuri
Well, I did some Internet stalking of you, doctor, and saw that you went to, you did your undergrad in Florida. Is that where you're from originally?

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Katrina Knauer
Yep. I grew up just outside of Jacksonville, Florida. And then I went to school at Florida State. And I am a Floridian.

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Mercedes Landazuri
Well, Jacksonville is actually a big music town, but this podcast isn't about music.

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Katrina Knauer
It is. I love that, you know, that. I feel like I loved growing up there because I actually was exposed to great bands. A lot of famous bands went to my high school like Yellowcard and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, and it was just a really, really fun town. I love, I loved it, but I live on the West Coast now.

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Katrina Knauer
I've been out west for a long time and now I'm in Colorado, which I also love.

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Lynzie Nebel
And getting snow.

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Katrina Knauer
And getting snow already. Gosh.

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Mercedes Landazuri
So I was like, How did anybody beat Chicago for snow? But yeah, I guess.

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Lynzie Nebel
That's what I said about Buffalo, Erie.

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Katrina Knauer
Yeah, exactly. And just shocking to people. It shocked me. I was like, wasn't it like 70 degrees last week? And yeah. So. Here we are.

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Mercedes Landazuri
So you started working in high performance materials at Florida State, which I know through my Internet stalking, you really started to fall in love with polymers. So is that really what inspired to get you involved in this field? How did you, how did you really enter this field?

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Katrina Knauer
Sure. Yeah. I think at the time when I was at Florida State as an undergrad, you know, you're just kind of still figuring out life and you don't really know exactly what you want to do or who you are. But I was always really passionate about environmentalism and environmental activism, and my younger self was probably more obnoxious than my older self.

00;06;03;05 - 00;06;26;08
Katrina Knauer
I was a big protester. I would throw tomatoes at Burger Kings when they wouldn’t pay equal wages to workers. And this, that was me at the time. But I was also very passionate about science. And when they opened up the High-Performance Materials Institute at Florida State, they were hiring undergrads and they were paying quite well to work in the labs.

00;06;26;08 - 00;06;48;14
Katrina Knauer
And that's kind of what I saw at the time was just dollar signs and a job to put on my resume. And so I started working with the HPMI and that's when I realized that plastics were polymers. And this really cool chemistry that I was learning how to do was also the chemistry contributing to this enormous waste crisis that we were finding ourselves in.

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Katrina Knauer
But I was convinced that plastics were actually really awesome at the same time and so important to our quality of life. And that's what got me really passionate about, okay, how do we change this world to be more sustainable? How do we keep plastics in our lives but have it be less impactful to the environment? So that kind of started that path of, of me being involved in recycling and circular technologies, was that intersection between environmental passion and then also really liking polymer chemistry and trying to combine the two to make a difference.

00;07;21;26 - 00;07;42;04
Mercedes Landazuri
Right. I love that. And I love how you touch on that, which it's a quote I think I saw in a YouTube video of this Indian guru once, not, I don't think he's currently or when I saw when he recorded the video that he was working in industry, but he said something so astute that was you know, plastics are this environmental solution, and we've turned them into an environmental problem.

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Katrina Knauer
Yep. I mean, it's perfectly said. Life would be worse without plastics. I mean that is something we do have to keep in mind. They've done so much for our quality of life, but we unfortunately kind of went crazy with it and abused it in a way. And now we're trying to figure out what to do with all these carbons that are ending up in our natural environment.

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Katrina Knauer
But I think it's always, it's important to keep in mind that a broad ban and elimination wouldn't really solve our problems.

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Mercedes Landazuri
Hashtag bills, not bans.

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Katrina Knauer
Yes. Yes.

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Lynzie Nebel
And also hashtag Buffalo Bills.

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Katrina Knauer
Woo, go Bills.

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Lynzie Nebel
So after Florida, you went over to Southern Miss, which is, I know for Penn State grads, that's a big school to go to. If you want to do the polymer side of things. And so anyone that's come out of there, I've already had like, the highest respect of their knowledge because they are just the smartest of the smart people go there, but you.

00;08;47;27 - 00;08;51;11
Mercedes Landazuri
And Lynzie is a Penn State grad. She looks down on like almost every other people.

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Lynzie Nebel
I look down on so many people so but it's not true! But you know on top of that, like some of the smartest people I know, like I said, went to Southern Miss, like Dr. Alicyn Rhoades.

00;09;04;20 - 00;09;20;28
Lynzie Nebel
I think she's a genius. And, you know, she's Southern Miss graduate and, but you were inducted into the Graduate Hall of Fame at Southern Miss. How do you even, how do you even get that level of smart?

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Mercedes Landazuri
And can we have your autograph.

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Lynzie Nebel
And can we have your autograph.

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Katrina Knauer
So I didn't even know that was something that existed when I got the, that.

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Lynzie Nebel
That smart people thing.

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Katrina Knauer
It was, I was like, oh, what is this? I think the reason that happened is because at the time I realized in grad school that it was really, really cool and fun to win awards. So I remember the first award I got, I was like, What? They give you money and recognition for science? And so that like kind of started this addiction honestly when I was like, I'm going to win every single award out there.

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Katrina Knauer
And so I just started going for every opportunity that was available to polymer scientists and chemists. I wrote paper competitions, I wrote into poster competitions. I just went for all of them. And so all of a sudden Southern Miss was like, who is this chick winning all these awards?

00;10;18;27 - 00;10;21;01
Mercedes Landazuri
And I think that's a really healthy addiction, actually.

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Lynzie Nebel
I know all of the addictions.

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Katrina Knauer
Of all the addictions.

00;10;23;00 - 00;10;23;23
Lynzie Nebel
It’s the right one.

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Katrina Knauer
It was definitely the best addiction to have. And then also at the time, Southern participated in the three-minute thesis competition for the first time, which is, if you guys aren't familiar, it is super fun. And it's a competition that encourages PhD students to present on their thesis in 3 minutes or less in a very tangible, multi audience adapting way.

00;10;47;27 - 00;11;02;14
Katrina Knauer
And so they hosted this competition and I won that. And then I got to go to the national competition and then I won third place there and they were just like, okay, we're going to put her in the National Hall of Fame of Graduate Students.

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Katrina Knauer
Which was kind of, it was, so I was so honored and it was wonderful. But they also had this enormous portrait of me. In the college, and I was like, so embarrassed by it because it was also a picture of me. Like, they made me lean against.

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Mercedes Landazuri
Was it from Facebook?

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Katrina Knauer
No, thank God. They took a picture of me in the lab, but they maybe lean against the counter with my arms up on it in my lab coat.

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Lynzie Nebel
It’s never a cool pose.

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Katrina Knauer
No.

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Mercedes Landazuri
The bigger the award, the worse the picture.

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Katrina Knauer
Yeah, that's how it felt.

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Lynzie Nebel
Just be grateful you weren't doing one of these with the hand.

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Katrina Knauer
It was almost, almost like that. At least they let me put both arms down, but they also keep it up only for so many years. And then they took it down and they gave it to me and I was like. What am I supposed to do with this? So my partner thought it was really funny. He wrapped it up and gave it to my mom for Christmas.

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Lynzie Nebel
I love it.

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Katrina Knauer
My mom opened. It was like, am I supposed to hang this up? That's so funny.

00;12;08;13 - 00;12;15;17
Katrina Knauer
But that's how the Hall of Fame thing happened, and it was awesome. And I was very honored, even if I was just a little bit embarrassed.

00;12;16;03 - 00;12;26;21
Mercedes Landazuri
Very cool. So then after that, when you entered industry, you started working for BASF and you know, as a color person, I saw that you started working with a Mach5 Spectrophotometer, so.

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Katrina Knauer
I did.

00;12;27;10 - 00;12;38;03
Mercedes Landazuri
For those of you not, It sounds really, really cool. For those of you who don't work in color, don't work with spectrophotometers, a spectrophotometer is a tool used to measure color values.

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Mercedes Landazuri
So can you, I mean, do you remember working with the Mach5?

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Katrina Knauer
Yeah!

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Mercedes Landazuri
I’m just a super nerd when it comes to Spectros. I have my little purse Spectro over here.

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Katrina Knauer
Very cool, the handheld one, right?

00;12;49;15 - 00;12;56;08
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah. Well, this this guy. This little guy is from a company called Variable, but it's like this. So I literally carry it with me everywhere.

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Lynzie Nebel
She literally uses it on flights.

00;12;58;14 - 00;12;59;16
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah. I use it on flights.

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Katrina Knauer
That's so. cool. I love that. I could tell you what I was using the spectrophotometer for, which, by the way, I still use all the time and I can tell you why there at the time at BASF, and for those of you listening who are young and career researchers, it's important to keep in mind that you might not always go right into positions and technologies that you're super passionate about and want to be in.

00;13;22;19 - 00;13;49;28
Katrina Knauer
It is hard work. Like you have to create a name for yourself and never shut up about what you want to do. And maybe you'll get there. Because the reason I bring that up is I started in enzymes at BASF, which was really fun for me because I had no background at all in enzymes. And that's what I really enjoyed about that company is they did offer these programs that let you go into a completely new field.

00;13;49;28 - 00;14;15;14
Katrina Knauer
So I started at enzymes, which there is an intersection there with plastics, in that we are developing enzymes for plastic degradation. But I was working on enzymes for detergent applications. So the reason I was using the Mach5 is because we were actually trying to create these polymer enzyme class ascorbates that would make the enzyme more effective at removing very targeted stains from textiles.

00;14;16;00 - 00;14;40;02
Katrina Knauer
So we would have these swads that were like green grass, that was grass stain swads. So they would like blend grass and stain these cotton swads with it. And then I had wine stained, I had blood stained. I mean, we would take all these and we would treat them with the enzyme polymer systems, and then I would use the Mach5 to actually calculate and quantify the extent of colored stain removal from these textiles.

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Mercedes Landazuri
So that's cool. How..

00;14;43;20 - 00;14;46;09
Lynzie Nebel
Another use for your little handheld one.

00;14;46;18 - 00;14;46;27
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah.

00;14;47;23 - 00;14;57;12
Katrina Knauer
Definitely. And the handheld ones now I mean so much of what our group does at NREL is a big problem in recycling as you guys know is color, that's a huge challenge.

00;14;57;12 - 00;14;57;23
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah.

00;14;57;23 - 00;15;06;19
Katrina Knauer
And so as we are trying to create more virgin quality recyclates, a big part of that that I'm teaching my post-docs now is you have to be able to quantify color.

00;15;07;03 - 00;15;25;07
Katrina Knauer
And so we just bought a brand new spectrophotometer that my boss was like, Why is this $20,000? And I was like, because it's the best one and it's going to be really great. But I think it'd be really cool to have handheld ones to, to do kind of quicker checks on, on color change of the recyclates and that kind of thing.

00;15;25;26 - 00;15;27;24
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah, you can do it just right on the line, too.

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Katrina Knauer
Yeah.

00;15;29;16 - 00;15;48;13
Mercedes Landazuri
So, so you had mentioned that, you know, it was important for people, it's not easy to go immediately into your specific area of focus, your optimal area of focus, and that you need to be very vocal about it and where you want to go, and it sounds like, that's kind of what you did it at the end, moving from enzymes to recyclability.

00;15;49;08 - 00;16;12;24
Katrina Knauer
Yes, definitely. I again, going back to that concept of never shutting up about what you want, you may feel like you're being obnoxious, but it's how you continually tell people and get in their mindset of, Oh yeah, I catch. She’s really into sustainability and circularity. And she's a polymer person. She wants to work on recycling. These are the buzzwords that we constantly put in people's heads.

00;16;13;06 - 00;16;39;14
Katrina Knauer
And when I decided, so I was in a rotational program with BASF where I rotated. It's kind of like an industrial post-doc. And at the end of it, I decided to stay on permanently. And that's when I interviewed to go into the plastics division. And then within that division, specifically, I made it very clear in my interviews, was I wanted to work on recycling technologies, I want to build this into a BASF portfolio.

00;16;40;02 - 00;17;00;07
Katrina Knauer
And even then, once I got the job, was a slow start. I mean, they, at the time, this was like maybe how many years ago, four years ago. And we were starting to talk about circularity more, but it wasn't as much momentum as we have today. And so even then, I kind of felt like it was pushing this rock up a hill.

00;17;00;07 - 00;17;18;03
Katrina Knauer
Like I was like, we really should be working more in this space. And ultimately I got to start doing much, much more in ocean plastics and recycling. And but it definitely wasn't just like, Boom, I'm here, let's work on exactly what I'm passionate about. And it takes it takes work and patience.

00;17;18;09 - 00;17;32;02
Lynzie Nebel
It's funny you say that because even now, you know, I've worked in the injection molding industry for so long, and now I'm at my new company and I'm in hardware and it is not plastic at all. So every chance I get, I was like, I know plastics.

00;17;32;02 - 00;17;33;01
Katrina Knauer
I'm plastics.

00;17;33;06 - 00;17;33;15
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah.

00;17;33;24 - 00;17;36;21
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah. So you know all of that.

00;17;36;21 - 00;17;37;17
Katrina Knauer
Yes.

00;17;37;17 - 00;17;42;15
Lynzie Nebel
And I said the other day, I was like, I'm probably being obnoxious about it, but I'm okay with that.

00;17;42;27 - 00;17;43;07
Katrina Knauer
Yes.

00;17;43;24 - 00;18;05;17
Katrina Knauer
You should be, because it's just, that's just the reality of how careers kind of work. And I feel like in industry specifically, we are not as good at it as academics are because the academics have to be that way, like they have to get out their Twitter pages and they have to show the world this is their research, this is what they're going to work on so that people start associating their names with it.

00;18;05;26 - 00;18;24;26
Katrina Knauer
But in industry, we're not as good at branding ourselves and so I actually think professional branding is so important. And I try to encourage many young researchers going to industry that professionally branding yourself is going to play such a big role in your happiness and your career. And we have to get better at doing it.

00;18;25;23 - 00;18;31;04
Mercedes Landazuri
And you've done quite a bit of mentoring, I know as well, right. Can you can you talk a little bit about that?

00;18;31;13 - 00;18;53;28
Katrina Knauer
Yeah, sure. I love mentoring and I definitely when I was making the decision between going industry going versus academia, that was probably the hardest part, because I do enjoy mentoring and teaching and educating and working with students. I was just so disenchanted with the academic world at that time and ready to make an impact in a different way that I went to industry.

00;18;54;09 - 00;19;30;02
Katrina Knauer
However, that being said, I was lucky enough at BASF that I did get to mentor interns and several young career technicians coming through, which I really, really enjoyed. And then that's also kind of what taught me how to start managing research projects and managing groups. And then when I went to the startup world, I also got to work with some really great young technicians that I loved, loved working with and teaching them about polymers because they didn't come from polymer backgrounds and getting them excited about like, hey, maybe you can go back to school and do a Ph.D. and get a higher education.

00;19;30;23 - 00;19;57;26
Katrina Knauer
And then now that I'm at National Lab, I get to hire postdocs into my team. And that's been really wonderful, because they're at such a great intersection in their careers where they just came out of school. They're kind of still deciding whether they're going to do industry or academics. And I love teaching them about circularity and sustainability while also helping them figure out their career path and also teaching them how to professionally brand themselves and speak up for themselves.

00;19;57;26 - 00;20;10;15
Katrina Knauer
So I love mentoring. It's been a nice balance, especially at National Lab, that I get to do that without having to do, teach lots of classes. And so that's been, that's been great.

00;20;11;21 - 00;20;44;05
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah, I think that's such an underserved part of this industry. You know, we have a lot of the like institutionalized mentorships. You know, you have, you're at this company, this person has worked there, great. You guys can talk and be, they can be your mentor and you can move on. But I think a lot of a lot of the times we, if you don't have that in your company, which, a lot of companies in the plastics industry do not, especially they're smaller companies, mom and pop, custom injection, custom making, all that stuff.

00;20;44;05 - 00;21;01;12
Lynzie Nebel
I think we miss out on that opportunity. And the other opportunity is like, to teach about outside of here in injection molding, like to teach sustainability, like that should be something we're teaching them from the outside in, inside out.

00;21;01;12 - 00;21;21;03
Lynzie Nebel
But you know something so that they're thinking about it when they're actually designing their mold or, you know, designing these runners that are however long, and I think especially formalized mentorship programs really do go a long way on that kind of stuff.

00;21;21;03 - 00;21;44;02
Katrina Knauer
They definitely do. And you guys being injection molders, you are in a unique place in the supply chain that there's a lot to teach younger people coming in or new people coming in, not always younger that when we look at the demand for recycled content and demand for circularity, it's coming from the brand owners primarily because they're so consumer facing.

00;21;44;18 - 00;22;09;12
Katrina Knauer
But then the polymer producers are like, that's not really our problem. And so really it's the in-between, it's the compounders and converters and the injection molders and the OEMs that are like getting crazy demands from their customers to produce all this recycled content of equal quality and price. And they're like, we don't know what to do, how do we get the supply and how do.

00;22;09;12 - 00;22;33;12
Katrina Knauer
And then that was a big part of the startup company when we were making these new polymers from chemically recycled monomers. I was trying really hard to work with injection molders because they could look great on an Instron, they could look great on a DSC. But do they injection mold? We don't know. And we can run biology, we can run MFI, and that's all well and good and we can check these boxes.

00;22;33;12 - 00;22;53;22
Katrina Knauer
But that is a different world once you start putting it in on processing lines. And so when we start moving more towards these circular materials and recycled content and new plastics are the future. Oh, the injection molding world is going to be so critical to that step. You're right. Like teaching that is going to be really important.

00;22;54;00 - 00;23;16;29
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah, and I know just from my past job, there have been times where it's been, okay, here's this, you know, post-consumer recycled material. Just sub that in or it's not, it's not as critical, like because I did a lot of dog toys. So, you know, it wasn't as close on, we didn’t have a whole lot, you know, there weren't as many dimensions.

00;23;16;29 - 00;23;37;12
Lynzie Nebel
So it was basically, does it look good and function? But even that, you know, you switch it out and it's like, okay, well now when we drop this, this is shattering and you're going to like stab your dog. Yeah. So it's stuff like that, but it's like, this is not a 1 to 1 replacement. We got to. Yeah, we got to work through this first.

00;23;38;06 - 00;23;39;10
Katrina Knauer
Yeah, exactly.

00;23;39;26 - 00;23;48;28
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah. So what are some of the hottest new technologies, some of the hottest emerging technologies and innovations in the recycling and sustainability space?

00;23;50;07 - 00;24;14;24
Katrina Knauer
Yeah, I would say from my point of view, the hottest technologies and newest innovations are these concepts that bring in the idea of circular carbon, rather than always focusing on circular plastics. So plastics are carbon dense materials, and they don't necessarily always have to go right back into the same exact function they were in in their first life.

00;24;15;07 - 00;24;37;04
Katrina Knauer
And many of us are aiming for that. That's the goal. Like you take a polymer, you deconstruct it back to its constituent parent monomers and then repolymerize it back to that polymer. And you can do that an infinite amount of times. And the reality is we didn't make polymer plastics today to really do that. That was never the intention 70 years ago when we made LDPE for the first time.

00;24;37;28 - 00;25;08;12
Katrina Knauer
And that's really hard to do with a robust carbon backbone. But the cool part about things like polyethylene is that it is just a carbon backbone. It's actually a chemist’s playground for functionality. You can add so much to that backbone to make it something new. And so I think that's kind of to me some of the hottest, coolest technologies coming out, is this idea of, okay, well, it's much lower energy if we can oxidize PE to diacrylic acids and now those acids are monomers for nylons and polyester and polyurethanes.

00;25;08;12 - 00;25;29;18
Katrina Knauer
And so now you're putting a single-use waste material into now these co-engineering plastics that are usually designed for longer use, and they're not collected in a blue bin at home. So they don't have recycled content coming in. But you're finding these kind of novel carbon pathways to bring these waste carbons back into a new lifetime.

00;25;29;18 - 00;25;48;23
Katrina Knauer
I think that's really exciting and really cool. And then of course, there's this, I'm a little biased because this came out of our group, but I do think that this is incredibly exciting, impactful technologies for the future. And I don't know if you guys saw this science paper that our team released three weeks ago.

00;25;48;23 - 00;25;52;07
Mercedes Landazuri
Did it win any awards yet?

00;25;52;07 - 00;25;54;09
Katrina Knauer
Not yet. But it's definitely going to, maybe.

00;25;55;02 - 00;25;56;00
Lynzie Nebel
Give it few more weeks.

00;25;57;02 - 00;26;31;20
Katrina Knauer
But we're proposing a chemical recycling, a chemical and biological tandem technology. So for such a long time, we've also, we kind of siloed everything into their own places, like mechanicals, only mechanical, chemicals only chemicals, biologies, only biology. So we actually proposed and did a successful case study on this tandem process that, where we took mixed plastic waste. In this particular case study, it was polystyrene foam cups, it was Dr. Pepper PET bottles, and it was HDPE milk jugs that we ground down together.

00;26;32;13 - 00;27;13;24
Katrina Knauer
And while those plastics in of themselves are not bioavailable to microbes, if we oxidize them in very mild conditions to these smaller oxygenated molecules, they are bioavailable. So that's why we developed a pretreatment step that's about 2 to 4 hours where we can oxidize these mixed plastics into these small molecule oxygenated intermediates. And then instead of building out energy-intensive separations to try to isolate those compounds from each other, we engineered a bacterium that we funnel this soup of molecules into and the bacteria has a metabolic pathway for all those carbons.

00;27;14;02 - 00;28;06;28
Katrina Knauer
And so what it does is it acts as this tiny little chemical factory and essentially under incubation will digest those carbons and express one single bio product. And it's polyhydroxyalkanoates or PHAs, which are biodegradable plastic packaging. And so we're trying to show the world that this is a very low energy and a really cool tandem designed to take highly contaminated, mixed waste, and instead of pyrolysing it down into this mixture of all these carbon links, this mild oxidation plus the bacterial digestion, we can create PHA polymers from it, which are sold at about $4.50 a kilogram. So they're quite high value. So this is just released. It's kind of like buzz around it right now because it's a science paper.

00;28;07;06 - 00;28;12;15
Katrina Knauer
And we're also taking it to the International Space Station this year.

00;28;12;18 - 00;28;15;11
Lynzie Nebel
As you do, you know.

00;28;16;16 - 00;28;17;24
Katrina Knauer
No big deal. Just sending it to space.

00;28;17;24 - 00;28;20;29
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah. Just a little NASA action.

00;28;20;29 - 00;28;22;06
Katrina Knauer
Yep. Yep.

00;28;22;11 - 00;28;45;03
Katrina Knauer
So it's pretty cool. That was my little plug for our work, but it is an incredibly novel concept to do this type of combined technology. And as we think about, you guys mentioned, previously to be this Greenpeace report that came out and all this fear about the pollution that could come from some of these chemical recycling plants that are very high energy, where they're going to be located.

00;28;45;03 - 00;28;51;03
Katrina Knauer
This is another kind of pathway that's a little more environmentally friendly, low energy and manageable.

00;28;51;29 - 00;29;04;04
Mercedes Landazuri
So what kind of, so you mentioned that the PHAs can be used for biodegradable plastic packaging. What specific types of packaging applications would you foresee for this?

00;29;04;04 - 00;29;15;13
Katrina Knauer
Sure. Most of the PHAs we see on the market today are, they're not the best materials ever. They're quite, their mechanical properties leave something to be desired for sure. But they're considered.

00;29;15;25 - 00;29;23;16
Mercedes Landazuri
Best, you know, mechanical property. I mean, it's suited to a specific application. It could be the best polymer for the application.

00;29;23;23 - 00;29;47;07
Katrina Knauer
It could. And I mean, they're quite useful. They just haven't had widespread adoption because biopolymers are more expensive and all of those things. But typically you'll see PHAs used in the green compost bags. Starbucks has recently adopted a PHA straw. You've also, they can somewhat be put into, they can be injection molded, so they'll be molded into utensils, cutlery, that kind of thing.

00;29;47;15 - 00;30;11;24
Katrina Knauer
So kind of similar applications we saw in the early 2000s. The PLA being really pushed into, PHAs are kind of being pushed into that type of application space. The cool thing about PHAs is that they don't require industrial composting conditions to break down, they actually, but they will degrade quite naturally, quite naturally in the environment with half lives of, you know, 90 days.

00;30;12;05 - 00;30;43;20
Katrina Knauer
And so that's pretty exciting as you think about how much plastics we unfortunately lose to our natural world, which should never happen. But unfortunately it does. And even if recycling was absolutely perfect because of the small nature and lightweight format of plastics, we're all cities, crowded areas. We're still going to lose plastics to the environment. And so as we build in more biodegradability and have that play into recyclability, I think those are two concepts that we have to consider together.

00;30;44;15 - 00;30;54;09
Mercedes Landazuri
One, I want just to send a public service announcement out to anybody who works for Marriott. If you could please get on the PHA straw thing.

00;30;54;09 - 00;30;55;24
Katrina Knauer
It’d be great.

00;30;55;24 - 00;31;01;01
Mercedes Landazuri
I went to my cousin's wedding in Key West and let me tell you, drinking the...

00;31;01;01 - 00;31;02;05
Lynzie Nebel
Anger.

00;31;02;05 - 00;31;09;04
Mercedes Landazuri
Drinking pina coladas, drinking these frozen drinks out of a paper straw in the Florida weather.

00;31;09;16 - 00;31;10;16
Mercedes Landazuri
It's not a good deal.

00;31;10;16 - 00;31;11;16
Lynzie Nebel
It's a joke.

00;31;11;16 - 00;31;19;16
Mercedes Landazuri
It's a joke. Yes, it's a joke. I mean, we all feel bad for sad turtle, but I'm so happy, I'm so happy to hear about these PHAs that let’s move to PHAs.

00;31;19;16 - 00;31;20;08
Lynzie Nebel
Let’s move to PHA’s.

00;31;22;09 - 00;31;47;27
Katrina Knauer
The paper straw thing. I totally respect everything people are trying and they are in terms of, again, that half life in the natural environment, it's significantly shorter than plastic straws are, of course. But I remember I saw a picture last year, this image that was really impactful of a plastic Starbucks cap, you know, the curved caps, they put on the iced coffees.

00;31;48;16 - 00;32;01;01
Katrina Knauer
They're like domed, that, with a paper straw in it on the ground. And so when you think about the problem of that picture, you're just like, oh, that's hard to see.

00;32;02;09 - 00;32;40;20
Katrina Knauer
But that's another cool thing about PHAs, I actually do envision a future where they play more into some of these bio polyesters that are on the market, like the PLAs, the PBATs, the PBSs, PHAs will play a role there. And I think there's really great opportunities to start combining these polyesters together to achieve performance properties that you need for certain applications, but have now a, again going back to half lives, a one single material or maybe your domed cap is a PBAT and your straw is a PHA, and hopefully that ends up in composting where it should go.

00;32;40;27 - 00;32;48;16
Katrina Knauer
But again, if that's left to the world, will be gone into biomass, carbon dioxide and water within four years.

00;32;50;01 - 00;32;56;29
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah. So if, if you guys at all get a call to help on this, please put your priority on pina coladas in the Florida area.

00;32;56;29 - 00;33;05;16
Katrina Knauer
I will test out humidity conditions for Florida and specifically pina colada drinks for these PHA straws.

00;33;05;16 - 00;33;07;19
Mercedes Landazuri
Much appreciated.

00;33;07;19 - 00;33;09;08
Lynzie Nebel
We appreciate you doing the Lord’s work.

00;33;09;25 - 00;33;18;13
Katrina Knauer
I was just in Florida yesterday before coming back to Colorado and I drank a pina colada, so I feel like we had a moment, Mercedes, where we were connected.

00;33;18;21 - 00;33;19;10
Lynzie Nebel
We did.

00;33;19;10 - 00;33;25;05
Katrina Knauer
And we didn’t know it so and it was delicious. I hadn't had one in, I can't even remember. And it was delicious.

00;33;25;21 - 00;33;28;25
Mercedes Landazuri
I love it. I love it.

00;33;28;25 - 00;33;33;00
Lynzie Nebel
So, I mean, I suppose getting back to the point of this interview, besides...

00;33;33;00 - 00;33;37;05
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah, we can stop talking.

00;33;37;05 - 00;33;52;27
Lynzie Nebel
So can you tell us some of your work at Novoloop and I know it led to some of your involvement with the, with NREL and the BOTTLE Consortium. Well, my talking is going very well today.l

00;33;53;02 - 00;33;53;16
Mercedes Landazuri
Just the mention about a bottle.

00;33;55;19 - 00;33;57;20
Lynzie Nebel
I'm already pina colada.

00;33;58;23 - 00;34;00;03
Katrina Knauer
On that. It is Friday, so.

00;34;00;03 - 00;34;00;14
Lynzie Nebel
It is.

00;34;01;05 - 00;34;09;20
Lynzie Nebel
I mean it is dangerously close to pina colada time. So can you first off, can you tell us what BOTTLE stands for and BOTTLE consortium?

00;34;09;29 - 00;34;36;11
Katrina Knauer
Yes, definitely. So BOTTLE is an acronym for Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment. And that came together beautifully to make BOTTLE. We thought it was very clever. However many people now think we only work on plastic bottles, so that's been kind of annoying, because we work across the entire space of plastic waste, not just bottles.

00;34;36;11 - 00;34;54;22
Mercedes Landazuri
So can you, you'd mentioned in our correspondence that the one thing that you've focused on lately in your work is the deconstruction of plastics. Can you tell us some of the work that you've done involved in the breaking down of plastics, outside of the PHAs?

00;34;55;06 - 00;35;16;19
Katrina Knauer
Yeah, definitely. So we've adopted this terminology of deconstruction in BOTTLE, because we want to move away again from the concept of it has to be depolymerization back to the constituent monomers or using phraseology that people are getting bent out of shape about these days. Like if you use advanced recycling, they get mad. If you use chemical recycling, people will get mad.

00;35;16;19 - 00;35;44;09
Katrina Knauer
So we felt like deconstruction was the, quote, bipartisan word to use here. But it's actually quite fitting because if you think about these plastics, they're not only just polymer architectures that you need to deconstruct to harness back the carbons, they're also formulations, right, that none of these plastics exist as a single polymer chain. They are highly formulated, most likely overengineered.

00;35;44;09 - 00;36;13;12
Katrina Knauer
But that's because polymer producers get really proud of their formulations and that little additive gives them that little leg up in terms of more U.V. stability than that polymer producer’s polyethylene. And so when we think about the chemical recycling pathways or chemo catalytic pathways, it is deconstructing of a formulation, not just a polymer. And so we've actually focused a lot on very low energy pathways to do this.

00;36;13;12 - 00;36;34;22
Katrina Knauer
We've seen pyrolysis and gasification really take off in the media in the last couple of years, and those technologies have been around a long time and are quite matured and they are capable of breaking bonds in mixed plastics. They can handle more contamination than mechanical recycling. There's significant pros there, but they are high energy inputs.

00;36;35;12 - 00;36;58;08
Katrina Knauer
They require a lot of energy to break carbon-carbon bonds. So we've been trying to explore other catalytic pathways to break down these recalcitrant materials and do so in a way that makes sense that we're actually getting useful chemicals and building blocks out of the process. Because that's the next challenge is, it's actually not that hard to break down polymers.

00;36;59;03 - 00;37;02;01
Katrina Knauer
It does require a lot of energy, but it's not that hard.

00;37;02;01 - 00;37;03;08
Mercedes Landazuri
It's not hard.

00;37;03;08 - 00;37;07;03
Lynzie Nebel
And then after that, you just take it and send it to space and it's just..

00;37;07;03 - 00;37;08;06
Katrina Knauer
And then you let space deal with it.

00;37;08;17 - 00;37;35;20
Katrina Knauer
But the real problem is now becoming the downstream separations and chemical engineering and unit operations that we need to actually take these soups that not only are the deconstructed plastics, but they have dirt in there and heavy metals and all this stuff that comes through our waste streams. How do we actually outfit systems to recover pure and useful monomers from that without just doing tons of distillation columns that are so energy intensive?

00;37;35;23 - 00;38;01;17
Katrina Knauer
Right. So we have a really big task on our hand, but this has been our major focus within BOTTLE is exploring not only chemo catalytic but bio catalytic pathways to take apart these polymers. And then in tandem with that building out novel separations technologies that will allow us to recover highly pure streams without having to put in enormous energy input.

00;38;01;17 - 00;38;22;12
Katrina Knauer
So that's our, that's our big goal. And we're making a lot of progress. We're a research institution, though, so we're always operating, not always, but we're mostly operating at the benchtop scale with line of sight to scale. It's our goals, but we're new. We've only been around for two years, so we're definitely in discovery phases of many of these technologies.

00;38;22;12 - 00;38;28;24
Katrina Knauer
But some of them are starting to look incredibly promising as we go into the future.

00;38;30;04 - 00;38;35;25
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah, yes, certainly sounds like it. It's very exciting, the work that you're doing.

00;38;35;25 - 00;38;51;07
Lynzie Nebel
I'm almost afraid to ask this question, but I have to assume what is, what's been the greatest accomplishment of your career so far? Because my guess is, even though you've told us like 65 amazing things, there is also something else, though.

00;38;51;11 - 00;38;52;01
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah, yeah.

00;38;52;19 - 00;39;23;20
Katrina Knauer
Definitely I have an answer for this, because it is something I'm incredibly proud of. And I also want to give a shout out to this group of people. So you guys know, I was I spent time at Novoloop for a few years before I came to NREL. And the Novoloop technology is an oxidation technology, so I already had this background in oxidation before coming to NREL but what we were doing there was oxidizing polyolefin waste to this distribution of these dicarboxylic acids.

00;39;24;06 - 00;39;49;09
Katrina Knauer
And it's not just one chain link di-acid. There's a lot of them in there. And at the time we were trying to figure out, you know, should we start trying to isolate these from each other and use distillations to get maybe adipic acid other acids out? But we had this idea of, okay, could we use the mixture of di-acids and make new polymers from them and avoid that big separation step?

00;39;49;24 - 00;40;06;25
Katrina Knauer
And then the world of polymer science, as you guys probably know, it's pounded into our heads as students is that you will never, ever make a good polymer from a mixture of monomers, that it's like impossible to do based on Carothers equation. And I was really intent on trying to prove them wrong.

00;40;07;05 - 00;40;07;23
Mercedes Landazuri
I love it.

00;40;08;08 - 00;40;44;00
Katrina Knauer
And this was a blood, sweat and tears of not only my life, but many of my colleagues that I worked with there. Shout out to Cody Higginson, who is one of the best polymer chemists I've ever met in my life, as well as Russell Pratt, who worked on this with me too. And I mean that just a couple of weeks ago On (running) announced using that product that we developed from recycled broken down polyethylene to make these new polyurethanes, the On running shoe company is using that type of TPU in the outer sole of their new Cloud9 running shoe.

00;40;44;09 - 00;40;49;27
Katrina Knauer
And that moment, like that announcement. And even though I'm not there anymore, I was like, Oh my God.

00;40;50;18 - 00;40;51;03
Mercedes Landazuri
We did it.

00;40;52;09 - 00;41;11;16
Katrina Knauer
I mean, when we signed that JDA years ago, I cannot even, I mean truly my life was ten hour days at the benchtop seven days a week every day of my life. I mean, that was, I became a better polymer chemist and those are my patents for those polymers. But for whoo.

00;41;12;15 - 00;41;34;21
Katrina Knauer
There was a lot of moments where I was like, this will never work. And the fact that it's now at the level where it's being adopted into a shoe, it's just awesome. And that's like so cool because it is going to be one of the first footwear products that has like chemically repurposed plastic monomers and it's pretty awesome.

00;41;34;28 - 00;41;38;01
Mercedes Landazuri
That's a big deal, so does everybody get one for Christmas?

00;41;38;03 - 00;41;41;02
Katrina Knauer
Yeah, they did give us all a pair.

00;41;41;02 - 00;41;53;19
Katrina Knauer
They gave us all a pair of shoes when they started working with us. And I still wear them today. I actually love their shoes. But yeah, I was, I don't know, I don't work there anymore. But if they all get a pair of the Cloud9, I'm going to reach out and be like, can I have one?

00;41;53;19 - 00;41;56;14
Lynzie Nebel
And here's the thing. I'm going to need a pair of them.

00;41;56;14 - 00;41;56;27
Mercedes Landazuri
Oh, yeah.

00;41;57;13 - 00;42;12;08
Katrina Knauer
But. Oh, yeah. Well, that was just really, I mean, almost like brought tears to my eyes. It was it's really cool to see a new product being adopted and you guys coming from industry know that that is so rare. Like it really is.

00;42;12;08 - 00;42;12;15
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah.

00;42;12;15 - 00;42;17;17
Katrina Knauer
You do not get a lot of new polymers onto the market. So that was that was cool.

00;42;18;06 - 00;42;23;09
Mercedes Landazuri
Do you have do you have like an affectionate name for this polymer? Like a nickname.

00;42;23;09 - 00;42;48;28
Katrina Knauer
So we've, they brand named it Oistre. That's the actual brand name of it. It's supposed to kind of represent how oysters naturally recycle water. I don't know. But we used to call it circ, which I thought was cooler. But apparently someone already had that name. And, you know, the trade name industry is crazy, but that's the trade name for it, Oistre.

00;42;48;28 - 00;42;58;27
Katrina Knauer
And at the time we just called them TPUs. We were pretty boring. We didn't have any cool names for them. We're just boring old polymer scientists.

00;42;58;27 - 00;43;04;22
Mercedes Landazuri
Very cool. So we're running, we're running out of time here. But. But we hear you're working on a book, is that right?

00;43;05;03 - 00;43;06;13
Lynzie Nebel
We need to know about it.

00;43;06;13 - 00;43;25;16
Katrina Knauer
So one of the scientists I already mentioned, Cody Higginson, he's still with Novoloop, him and I are writing a book on chemical deconstruction technologies for plastics. So trying to create a comprehensive view of what's out there beyond just pyrolysis and which is what so many people think of when they hear chemical recycling.

00;43;26;07 - 00;43;47;06
Katrina Knauer
So we're writing a book, we’re doing this with the De Gruyter publishers, and we already have a really beautiful cover, that an incredible graphic designer made for us. I am blanking on his name right now, which is making me feel so bad. So I'm going to probably email you guys.

00;43;47;13 - 00;43;48;09
Lynzie Nebel
We'll put it in the show notes.

00;43;48;09 - 00;44;00;08
Katrina Knauer
Put in the show notes, but it's a really fun picture of polystyrene kind of unzipping. And then he made the snow in the background. That's like foam polystyrene. It's just really fun.

00;44;00;08 - 00;44;00;23
Lynzie Nebel
I love it.

00;44;01;26 - 00;44;23;04
Katrina Knauer
So that's in the works. It's been something that we've been working on for a while and would love to be done with this year. That's the goal. But yeah, stay tuned. Hopefully that will be useful for the world and be a guide to people who start going more into the space and trying to understand what the word recycling means.

00;44;23;04 - 00;44;27;20
Katrina Knauer
Because as you guys know, there's about 100 different definitions for that right now.

00;44;27;20 - 00;44;42;11
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope I certainly hope that you will definitely be getting a copy of the book when you do release it. And I hope that sincerely that you hit your mom up for that picture so you can use that for your about the author.

00;44;42;25 - 00;44;43;27
Katrina Knauer
The about the author.

00;44;43;27 - 00;44;47;01
Lynzie Nebel
Bring it on.

00;44;47;01 - 00;44;58;06
Katrina Knauer
I will say so when we got the International Space Station Project, Ed Rowe came in and took new pictures. And I was really adamant. I was like, I'm going to pose the way I want to pose for this picture.

00;44;58;06 - 00;44;59;02
Lynzie Nebel
Nothing weird.

00;44;59;17 - 00;45;18;19
Katrina Knauer
Yeah. Like I'm like I'm in charge now. And so I love the picture they got of me and it's finally like, Oh, my God, there's a picture of me in a lab where I don't look like a total dork and I'm just like really excited about that. So maybe I'll do a side by side comparison of, like, this is when I was young, and this is me as a boss.

00;45;18;20 - 00;45;25;10
Lynzie Nebel
You should do one of those, like where I was like, how yet or how I'm going kind of. Yes, how it started, how it’s going.

00;45;25;10 - 00;45;27;14
Katrina Knauer
I had big bangs in the one.

00;45;28;10 - 00;45;30;01
Lynzie Nebel
That's cool.

00;45;30;01 - 00;45;31;00
Katrina Knauer
I went through a phase.

00;45;31;00 - 00;45;32;26
Lynzie Nebel
So we all have.

00;45;32;26 - 00;45;34;01
Mercedes Landazuri
Going through that right now.

00;45;34;10 - 00;45;39;26
Katrina Knauer
Yeah. Oh they look great. I mean, you have curly hair though, so it looks so cute, right? Yeah, I love it.

00;45;40;27 - 00;45;57;02
Mercedes Landazuri
Well, Dr. Kat Knauer, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for all of the blood, sweat and tears you do put into sustainability and circularity, making our industry and our world a better place. And we can't wait to see what you do next.

00;45;57;15 - 00;46;07;08
Katrina Knauer
Yeah. Thank you both for having me. And so much fun and hope that some of your listeners also enjoyed it and learned something from it. So thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

00;46;07;25 - 00;46;08;04
Lynzie Nebel
Thanks.

00;46;08;04 - 00;46;09;02
Mercedes Landazuri
Thanks.

00;46;09;02 - 00;46;09;10
Katrina Knauer
OK.

00;46;10;00 - 00;46;38;13
Lynzie Nebel
Hey. Thanks so much for listening to PlastChicks. New episodes appear on the first Friday of every month. So either follow or subscribe to get those new episodes ASAP. PlastChicks - The Voices of Reason is a plastics podcast sponsored by SPE-Inspiring Plastics Professionals. If you want to find out more about SPE, please visit. 4, like the number, SPE dot org.

00;46;38;13 - 00;46;41;08
Mercedes Landazuri
Oh, PlastChicks.