Interest in epoxy recycling has increased over the past several years within the scientific community due to high consumption of these materials in the chemical industry. However, a huge challenge is to find a simple, rapid, and green recycling procedure that will allow recovery of the epoxy with similar high-quality mechanical properties as the original material. In this study, a liquid phase recycling procedure ..employing Ionic Liquids (ILs) as green solvents were evaluated for such a purpose. ILs are defined as molten salts with melting points less than 100 °C and are typically composed of bulky cations with organic or inorganic counteranions. Various properties of ILs such as low vapor pressure, high thermal stability, high conductivity, and tunability, make these solvents excellent candidates for use in recycling procedure. In this study, epoxy dissolution was studied in the presence of various alkyl-methyl imidazolium ILs and a variety of alcohols in order to determine the depolymerization capacity of these co-solvents at mild temperatures in the absence and presence of catalysts. In addition, recovery and reuse of the monomer after dissolution, as well as recovery and reuse of the ILs after.dissolution was examined. Future studies will focus on repolymerization of the recovered monomer and evaluation of mechanical properties of the recycled epoxy.

Alkyl-Methyl-Imidazolium ionic liquids as green solvents for epoxy recycling

2019 Spring National Meeting

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