A new strategy to achieve the recycling of plastic waste by catalysis under mild conditions

Abstract

It is extremely difficult to break cross-linked structures of plastic, causing that conditions of recycling wastes plastic usually were rigorous by traditional chemical methods. The high temperature and high pressure conditions lead to waste of energy, pollution of environment, and costly. A novel plastics conversion into the adsorbent or catalyst precursor at ambient temperature and pressure is surveyed. Polyester plastics' low-temperature-driven HCl catalysis conversion achieves effective control of the pore structure and surface properties, and the specific surface area increased by 563%. In addition, the well-optimized polyester using H2SO4 catalytic optimization increased the NH3 adsorption capacity by 105 times, which was higher than that of most reported activated carbon NH3 adsorbents due to the formation of porous structure and numerous interaction sites (e.g., −SO3H), and confinement effects in the polyester. These results provide a new route of plastic recycling as an adsorbent or catalyst precursor.