Greener Nylon

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered an environmentally-friendly method of producing caprolactam, the precursor of Nylon.

Nylon is currently manufactured in two double-step processes, each of which uses highly aggressive reagents and each generates four times as much ammonium sulphate as a by-product, and its disposal comes at considerable cost.

In an article published in the scientific journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas from the Department of Materials Science and Dr. Robert Raja from the Department of Chemistry in Cambridge, described a one-step process of producing caprolactam that relies on air as an oxidant and does not use solvents and reagents that are environmentally corrosive.

“Because of the increasing industrial demand for Nylon it our responsibility as scientists to explore and develop new ways of creating it that have minimal effects on the environment,” said Dr. Raja.

Nylon is used in many industries, from automobile manufacturers to the carpet industry and electronics to name just a few. In fact 3.8 million tons of nylon are produced each year which means that companies are left with four times that much of ammonium sulphate to dispose of.

“This new method is simple, solvent free and minimises production and disposal costs,” he said.

“Some ten years ago my group at the Royal Institution and Cambridge decided to use our knowledge of solid-state chemistry to design new catalysts that could enable the production of many commodity chemicals using benign reagents (like air or oxygen) rather than nitric acid or other ecologically harmful ones. This recent advance is part of our wide range of such studies,” said Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas.