(397i) Sustainable Process for the Recycling of Polyethylene Phthalate

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a thermoplastic polyester with excellent thermal and mechanical properties. PET is the third-most produced polymer (18% of world polymer production) and widely used in textile industry, X-ray films, food packaging particularly for water and soft-drink bottles.

Majority of plastic waste is going to land field. To recycle PET, chemical recycling has advantages over mechanical approaches in terms of better adaptability on heterogeneity of the solid wastes and no degradation of the product properties. In this paper, we will present a novel approach for chemical recycling of PET. This novel approach is featured by a simulated moving bed chromatography (SMBC) in the purification of Bis(2-Hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (BHET), which is the deploymerization product of PET. This novel approach can ensure a high purity of BHET that is suitable for reproducing chemical grade PET even with a low quality PET feedstock.