2,5-Tetrahydrofurandimethanol as a sustainable comonomer for modification of polyethylene terephthalate: Liter-level pilot test and non-isothermal crystallization kinetics

Abstract

2,5-tetrahydrofurandimethanol (THFDM), which is an alicyclic diol in products of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), is a sustainable monomer to protect environment for replacing the role of isophthalic acid (IPA) and 1,4-cyclohexanedimethanol (CHDM) which were optimized polyethylene terephthalate (PET) performance. By direct esterification method, poly (ethylene-co-tetrahydrofurandimethanol terephthalate) (PETT) was synthesized in 2.5 L reactor. The results showed that the contents of THFDM in copolyester were less than that feeding ratio attributed to its lower reaction reactivity. The color of PETT slightly turned yellow. PETT performed broader processing temperature window, while Tg maintained in good range because of the cyclic structure of THFDM. Especially, the cold crystallization occured in PETT but not in PET after finishing melt crystallization. Otherwise, the thermal stability and crystal structure of PETT remained the same as PET. The crystallization activity of PETT became significantly lower than PET. What proved THFDM was effective in reducing PET crystallinity was that crystallization kinetics using Jeziorny theory and the trend of activation energy of melt crystallization which was calculated by Friedman method. And PETT-2 fibre had comparable mechanical property to PET fibre. In the advancement of green chemistry, THFDM has added a choice of cyclic bio-based comonomers.