Abstract
Plastics are ubiquitous in our society and are used in many industries, such as packaging, electronics, the automotive industry, and medical and health sectors, and plastic waste is among the types of waste of higher environmental concern. The increase in the amount of plastic waste produced daily has increased environmental problems, such as pollution by micro-plastics, contamination of the food chain, biodiversity degradation and economic losses. The selective and efficient conversion of plastic waste for applications in environmental remediation, such as by obtaining composites, is a strategy of the scientific community for the recovery of plastic waste. The development of polymeric supports for efficient, sustainable, and low-cost heterogeneous catalysts for the treatment of organic/inorganic contaminants is highly desirable yet still a great challenge; this will be the main focus of this work. Common commercial polymers, like polystyrene, polypropylene, polyethylene therephthalate, polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride, are addressed herein, as are their main physicochemical properties, such as molecular mass, degree of crystallinity and others. Additionally, we discuss the environmental and health risks of plastic debris and the main recycling technologies as well as their issues and environmental impact. The use of nanomaterials raises concerns about toxicity and reinforces the need to apply supports; this means that the recycling of plastics in this way may tackle two issues. Finally, we dissert about the advances in turning plastic waste into support for nanocatalysts for environmental remediation, mainly metal and metal oxide nanoparticles.
Highlights
The consumption of plastic materials is vast and has been growing continuously due to the advantages derived from its versatility
Plastics generally have good chemical resistance, but in all polymers, the chemical resistance is inversely proportional to temperature, since the diffusion of low molecular weight molecules is hampered by the degree of packaging of the macromolecules [64]
The main advantage when compared to mechanical recycling is the possibility of recycling heterogeneous plastics with impurities. An example of this technology is the pyrolysis process, in which polyolefins are depolymerized via heating, resulting in the conversion of plastic into oil and gases, which are used as inputs in the petrochemical area [85,86]
Summary
The consumption of plastic materials is vast and has been growing continuously due to the advantages derived from its versatility. Inadequate management of plastic waste does contaminate the environment, and, a substantial amount of waste has no specified use and most is disposed of in sanitary landfills or indiscriminately in inappropriate dumps and drainages (which is the case in most developing countries), posing a major threat to the environment and public health, and a huge loss of economic value [12,13,14,15,16,17,18] In this context, plastic waste has been promising for the field of catalysis, in obtaining supports for catalysts, and especially for nanostructured catalysts [19,20,21]. It is important to note that in this review we will focus on plastic waste to obtain catalytic supports, but this technology can be implemented for broader applications, including air purification, deodorization [23] and anti-fouling [24], as will be discussed briefly throughout the text
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