Abstract
Chemical recycling to monomers is one of the key strategies in tackling the issues deriving from persistent plastic pollution in the environment, and poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is among the most used polymers in modern society. In this context, we herein describe the glycolysis of PET to bis-hydroxyethyl terephthalate (BHET), promoted by basic cholinium salts differing for the anions, also comprising amino acid anions. We investigated the optimal reaction conditions, finding that the best-performing catalyst is [Ch][Gly], in the presence of which a conversion of 85% and a yield of 51% are achieved at 150 °C after 6 h, from PET deriving from a clear water bottle. We used our protocol to carry out the glycolysis of PET deriving from different postconsumer waste, like opaque and colored bottles and food packages, finding that the performance is better in the former compared with the latter starting materials.
Highlights
The widespread use of plastic materials is one of the hallmarks of the technological advancement of the contemporary era
In the light of all of these considerations, we studied the glycolysis of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) into bis-hydroxyethyl terephthalate (BHET), in the presence of choliniumbased task-specific ionic liquids (ILs) as catalysts
We studied the glycolysis of PET to BHET in the presence of different cholinium salts comprising amino acid-based ones
Summary
The widespread use of plastic materials is one of the hallmarks of the technological advancement of the contemporary era. Using the bakery package reported, glycolysis afforded a good conversion, 75%, but a much lower yield, 28%, compared with the results obtained when using bottles as a starting material (entry 5 of Table 1). Given the difference of conditions between our work and those listed, we carried out control experiments, performing glycolysis in the presence of two of the catalysts reported, namely, cholinium acetate, [Ch][OAc] and [bmim][Cl], employing the optimized experimental conditions used in this work, i.e., 6 h at 150 °C In both cases, we observed no appreciable conversions of PET. These appear more recalcitrant, we claim that our protocol shows good versatility, being applicable to a diverse range of PET waste
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