Waste plastics recycling through selective dissolution and re-precipitation

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Pravin Kannan

The Petroleum Institute, UAE

: Expert Opin Environ Biol

Abstract

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Selective dissolution and precipitation (SDP) technique is a mechanical recycling technique to selectively dissolve a type of plastic from a physically co-mingled mixture of polyolefins in an organic solvent and subsequently re-precipitate it by the addition of an anti-solvent or by flash vaporization. The types of plastics considered in this study are low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PETE). The proposal intends to develop a lab scale process for segregation of a comingled plastics to virgin plastics adopting SDP. The process of dissolution and precipitation is known to be influenced by process parameters such as type of plastic, the dissolution time, the concentration of the dissolving plastic in the solvent and the ratio of the volume of anti-solvent to the solvent. The process development activity would include optimizing the process parameters within the chosen limits of each of the parameters to maximize the yield and purity. The molecular structure of the recovered plastic will be determined using the FTIR analysis and the thermal properties will be studied by TGA/DTA analysis.

Biography

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Email: pkannan@pi.ac.ae