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Development of a solvent based recycling process for agricultural film
Summary
Researchers developed a solvent-based dissolution process using xylene or limonene to recover high-purity LDPE, ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer, and titanium dioxide from multilayer agricultural plastic film waste, achieving polymer purities above 98% and demonstrating lifecycle CO2 savings of 3.35 kg per kilogram of film compared to incineration.
Agricultural films are a major source of low density polyethylene (LDPE) waste, which is challenging to recycle, as it is often multilayer and can contain pigments such as titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) and carbon black. In this study a dissolution recycling process was developed, that was able to recover three outputs: LDPE, poly(ethylene-vinyl acetate) and TiO 2 from the waste stream with a single solvent, either xylene or limonene. After dissolution, the pigments were successfully removed through filtration. Polymer precipitation was induced by cooling and thus no antisolvent was required. The recovered polymers showed promising characteristics, with purities higher than 98 %, while the recovered TiO 2 showed a purity higher than 99 %. The prospective Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) revealed a total savings of 3.35 kg CO 2 equivalent per kg of film waste (for the case of black and white multilayer film) compared to incineration including energy recovery. Furthermore, a sensitivity study showed that the solvent management is crucial for the sustainability of the process.