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Application of Different Chemical Recycling for Plastics

Highlights in Science Engineering and Technology 2022 1 citation ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 35 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Muxin Xiong

Summary

This review examines chemical recycling methods for plastic waste as alternatives to mechanical recycling, focusing on depolymerization via solvolysis, pyrolysis, and purification processes applicable to PET, polyurethane, and polystyrene. The authors discuss how these approaches convert polymer waste back into feedstock monomers that can be repolymerized, addressing value degradation and sorting limitations inherent to mechanical recycling.

Plastics usage is always a huge part of human lives. The concern about plastics regarding their high accumulation rate is significant. Most of these plastics cannot be recycled and go to landfills instead. Traditional methods like mechanical recycling still have drawbacks in categories such as value degradation and the complexity of sorting plastic wastes. Besides mechanical recycling, chemical recycling is another option that uses chemical reactions to achieve the production of feedstock products. This research will focus on the different types of chemical recycling, including depolymerization via solvolysis, pyrosis, and purification method. Plastic polymer wastes like PET, PU, and PS can undergo these processes to be reproduced into useful monomer products that can be further polymerized back into the plastic structure.

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