Post-consumer carpets are generally not recycled while the beverages bottle themselves are often made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which can be recycled. The bottle caps, usually polyolefins, often mixed with other materials (like labels, ink, and remnant products), are problematic to recycle. Recycling the constituents back to their original forms is usually hard and requires advanced recycling methods. Processing the discarded materials to form new and useful composites can add additional value to materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill. As a part of a larger research project, we are making composites using post-consumer polypropylene carpets (c-PP) and mixed polyolefins recovered from post-consumer bottle waste by compression molding. A comparison of composites made from different kinds of polyolefins and polyolefins with different purity levels will be reported. The effects of different processing parameters and compositions were examined. The quality of the molded samples were characterized by flexural strength and modulus, creep behavior, impact strength, and optical microscopy. We find that these samples can have useful mechanical properties and possibly be useful for structural applications.

Repurposing post-consumer polypropylene carpet and mixed polyolefin waste into structural composites

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.