Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a widely used thermoplastic with a global production of ~50 MMT in 2016 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.7% by 2022. This exceptional market presence can be attributed to desired chemical, mechanical, optical, and thermal properties suited to its ideal candidature in the food and beverage packaging industries. PET consumerism is plagued with environmental persistence with no measurable degradation observed in landfills (half-life of &gt;2500 days). The recent governmental ban imposed by several countries on single-use plastics faced an immediate reversal to limiting the rampant spread of COVID-19, sowing the seeds for a plastic pandemic, making a solid case for true recycling. Chemical disassembly of polymers to re-polymerizable units by modifying existing plastics at source offers a robust strategy against a twofold crisis of both limited petrochemical resources and post-consumer waste. This study entails modification of traditional PET with chemically reactive moieties aka Trojan Horse (TH) motifs such as hexadec-8-enedioic acid that upon application of a unique and selective chemical trigger unzips the polymer to its monomeric predecessors. This entails the forming glycol adducts of the long-chain olefinic moiety inserted into the conventional PET chain, which can provide centers for oxidative cleavage in the presence of a strong oxidant that initiates the depolymerization mechanism. Oxidative breakdown accompanied by subsequent hydrolysis resulted in monomers and oligomers at chemically mild conditions realizing recycling at the molecular level which upon re-polymerization should result in at par performance properties with virgin PET.

Trojan Horse implants for implosive chemical recycling of Poly(ethylene terephthalate)

ACS Spring 2022

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