Chemical depolymerisation of PET complex waste: hydrolysis vs. glycolysis

The huge increase in the generation of post-consumer plastic waste has produced a growing interest in eco-efficient strategies and technologies for their appropriate management and recycling. In response to this, PROQUIPOL Project is focused on developing, optimizing and adapting feedstock recycling...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of material cycles and waste management 2014-04, Vol.16 (2), p.201-210
Main Authors: Aguado, Alicia, Martínez, L., Becerra, L., Arieta-araunabeña, M., Arnaiz, S., Asueta, A., Robertson, I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chemical reactions
Civil Engineering
Economics
Engineering
Environmental Management
Factorial experiments
Glycolysis
High density polyethylenes
Hydrolysis
Management
Monomers
Original Article
Plastic debris
Plastics
Plastics industry
Polyesters
Polyethylene terephthalate
Polyethylene terephthalates
Polymers
Recycling
Resins
Statistical analysis
Temperature
Waste Management/Waste Technology
Waste materials
Wastes
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The huge increase in the generation of post-consumer plastic waste has produced a growing interest in eco-efficient strategies and technologies for their appropriate management and recycling. In response to this, PROQUIPOL Project is focused on developing, optimizing and adapting feedstock recycling technologies as an alternative for management for the treatment of complex plastic waste. Among the different plastic wastes studied, PROQUIPOL Project is working on providing a suitable treatment to the highly colored and complex multilayered post-consumer waste fractions of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) by chemical depolymerisation methods. Glycolysis and alkali hydrolysis processes have been studied with the aim of promoting the transformation of PET into the bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate monomer and terephthalic acid, respectively. In both cases operational conditions such as temperature, reaction time, catalyst to PET rate and solvent to PET rate have been considered to optimize product yield, achieving values near to 90 % and monomer purities over 95 % in both processes. This paper presents results obtained for each treatment as well as a simplified comparison of technical, economic and environmental issues.
ISSN:1438-4957
1611-8227
DOI:10.1007/s10163-013-0177-y