Elucidating approaches to reclaim post-consumer plastic to access recyclable structural and building materials is critical to attaining a green economy and remediating existing plastic waste issues. Herein we discuss a method to chemically recycle waste plastic by reaction with elemental sulfur and plant-derived terpenoids. Elemental sulfur is a by-product of petrochemical refining that is separated by a desulfurization process. Thermally-treated sulfur depolymerizes to polymeric sulfur diradicals that can subsequently form covalent bonds with olefinic units in organic components via the atom economical inverse vulcanization process. At higher temperatures, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) degrades to olefinic fragments in situ and these react with such sulfur radicals to form a crosslinked network. In this research, PET, geraniol, and elemental sulfur were reacted with PET at different temperatures and the thermal and mechanical properties of the synthesized polymers are evaluated. These polymers were characterized by elemental analysis, thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, compressive strength and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). The synthesized materials showed high compressive and flexural strength when compared to other traditional building materials such as Ordinary Portland Cement. This initial investigation reveals that such approaches can produce composites with thermal and mechanical properties competitive with commercial materials.

Thiocracking of post-consumer plastic by reaction with terpene derivatives and elemental sulfur

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