Christina Kibuta
Recycling of polymers from collected ocean/beach plastics

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Christina Kibuta is an early stage researcher for C-PlaNet, working on ESR 15 project “Recycling of polymers from collected beach and ocean plastics” in the research group Smell and Aroma Research at Friedrich-Alexander University in the department of Chemistry and Pharmacy in Erlangen, Germany. She focuses on applying physical and chemical technologies to characterize beach and marine plastics based on their composition, presence of contaminants and physical/mechanical properties. The objective of her research is to recover high-quality polymers from marine and/or beach plastics by identifying suitable collection systems for marine and beach plastic feeds, extraction and cleaning of target polymers from the bulk using innovative recycling technologies such as solvent-based purification and enrichment processes such as the Creasolv technology, employing and evaluating the effectiveness of chemical recycling technologies and to use Analytical techniques such as GC-MS, HPLC-MS to determine the purity, quality and quantity of the recycled polymer.

 

Christina obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Dar es salaam in Tanzania in 2019. She then obtained her Master’s Degree in Analytical Chemistry from Loughborough University in the United Kingdom in 2021. In her master thesis she worked on non-invasive chemical profiling of Apis Mellifera (honeybee) volatiles using Gas chromatography-Mass spectrometry to study the social-chemical behavioral patterns of honeybees with the objective of invasively monitoring of honeybee health.

 

​Christina likes to read books, travel and to try new cuisines.

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