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Hydrolytic depolymerization of PET in a microwave reactor

journal contribution
posted on 2015-04-09, 09:19 authored by Mohammad N. Siddiqui, Dimitris S. Achilias, Halim H Redhwi, Dimitris N. Bikiaris, Konstantinos Katsogiannis, George P. Karayannidis
Recycling of PET was examined using hydrolytic depolymerization in an alkaline solution under microwave irradiation. The reaction was carried out in a sealed microwave reactor in which the pressure and temperature were controlled and recorded. The main products were the monomers TPA and EG. The effect of reaction temperature, time, amount of PET and alkaline concentration on the degree of PET depolymerization and TPA recovery was investigated. Microwave irradiation was found to reduce the time needed to achieve a specific degradation of PET significantly, with almost complete depolymerization occurring in 30 min at 180 °C and only 46 W of microwave power. Using a phase transfer catalyst (TOMAB) resulted in the same amount of unreacted PET but at significantly lower depolymerization temperatures.

Funding

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Grant Number: AR-27-101

History

School

  • Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Department

  • Chemical Engineering

Published in

Macromolecular Materials and Engineering

Citation

SIDDIQUI, M.H. ... et al., 2010. Hydrolytic Depolymerization of PET in a Microwave Reactor. Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, 295 (6), pp. 575–584.

Publisher

© WILEY-VCH Verlag

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2010

Notes

Closed access

ISSN

1438-7492

Language

  • en

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