Shadi Shirazimoghaddam, Ihsan Amin, Jimmy A Faria Albanese and N. Raveendran Shiju*,
{"title":"Chemical Recycling of Used PET by Glycolysis Using Niobia-Based Catalysts","authors":"Shadi Shirazimoghaddam, Ihsan Amin, Jimmy A Faria Albanese and N. Raveendran Shiju*, ","doi":"10.1021/acsengineeringau.2c00029","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p >Plastic production has steadily increased worldwide at a staggering pace. The polymer industry is, unfortunately, C-intensive, and accumulation of plastics in the environment has become a major issue. Plastic waste valorization into fresh monomers for production of virgin plastics can reduce both the consumption of fossil feedstocks and the environmental pollution, making the plastic economy more sustainable. Recently, the chemical recycling of plastics has been studied as an innovative solution to achieve a fully sustainable cycle. In this way, plastics are depolymerized to their monomers or/and oligomers appropriate for repolymerization, closing the loop. In this work, PET was depolymerized to its bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET) monomer via glycolysis, using ethylene glycol (EG) in the presence of niobia-based catalysts. Using a sulfated niobia catalyst treated at 573 K, we obtained 100% conversion of PET and 85% yield toward BHET at 195 °C in 220 min. This approach allows recycling of the PET at reasonable conditions using an inexpensive and nontoxic material as a catalyst.</p>","PeriodicalId":29804,"journal":{"name":"ACS Engineering Au","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/epdf/10.1021/acsengineeringau.2c00029","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ACS Engineering Au","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsengineeringau.2c00029","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, CHEMICAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
Plastic production has steadily increased worldwide at a staggering pace. The polymer industry is, unfortunately, C-intensive, and accumulation of plastics in the environment has become a major issue. Plastic waste valorization into fresh monomers for production of virgin plastics can reduce both the consumption of fossil feedstocks and the environmental pollution, making the plastic economy more sustainable. Recently, the chemical recycling of plastics has been studied as an innovative solution to achieve a fully sustainable cycle. In this way, plastics are depolymerized to their monomers or/and oligomers appropriate for repolymerization, closing the loop. In this work, PET was depolymerized to its bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET) monomer via glycolysis, using ethylene glycol (EG) in the presence of niobia-based catalysts. Using a sulfated niobia catalyst treated at 573 K, we obtained 100% conversion of PET and 85% yield toward BHET at 195 °C in 220 min. This approach allows recycling of the PET at reasonable conditions using an inexpensive and nontoxic material as a catalyst.
期刊介绍:
)ACS Engineering Au is an open access journal that reports significant advances in chemical engineering applied chemistry and energy covering fundamentals processes and products. The journal's broad scope includes experimental theoretical mathematical computational chemical and physical research from academic and industrial settings. Short letters comprehensive articles reviews and perspectives are welcome on topics that include:Fundamental research in such areas as thermodynamics transport phenomena (flow mixing mass & heat transfer) chemical reaction kinetics and engineering catalysis separations interfacial phenomena and materialsProcess design development and intensification (e.g. process technologies for chemicals and materials synthesis and design methods process intensification multiphase reactors scale-up systems analysis process control data correlation schemes modeling machine learning Artificial Intelligence)Product research and development involving chemical and engineering aspects (e.g. catalysts plastics elastomers fibers adhesives coatings paper membranes lubricants ceramics aerosols fluidic devices intensified process equipment)Energy and fuels (e.g. pre-treatment processing and utilization of renewable energy resources; processing and utilization of fuels; properties and structure or molecular composition of both raw fuels and refined products; fuel cells hydrogen batteries; photochemical fuel and energy production; decarbonization; electrification; microwave; cavitation)Measurement techniques computational models and data on thermo-physical thermodynamic and transport properties of materials and phase equilibrium behaviorNew methods models and tools (e.g. real-time data analytics multi-scale models physics informed machine learning models machine learning enhanced physics-based models soft sensors high-performance computing)