(337g) Indirect Hydrogenolysis of Polyethylene By Sub-Critical Butanol

Keywords

Indirect Hydrogenolysis, Solvolysis, Polyethylene

Abstract

The invention of plastics has reduced the demand on using natural resources, restructuring society and economy of the 21^st century, but the massive production of plastics was unfortunately not followed by sustainable ways for disposal. In 1950, global plastic production had reached around 2 million tons per year, has reached 380 million tons per year, and is estimated to reach more than 30 billion tons by the end of 2050.¹ On the other hand, the percentage of plastics recycled compared to global production is less than 10%; the remaining 90% are discarded to landfill, incinerated or leaked to the environment.

Plastic can be recycled by many techniques including solvolysis, pyrolysis, mechanical recycling, hydrogenolysis, etc. This study will perform polymer depolymerization using sub-critical butanol therefore, combining both solvolysis and indirect hydrogenolysis since the system will contain both a subcritical fluid and hydrogen abstracted from the fluid. This hybrid method is chosen as literature indicates that using hydrogen donor solvents can help increase the reaction rate therefore aiding hydrogenolysis.²

In this work, the conversion of this method will be the output parameter of concern while evaluating the effect of factors including temperature, catalyst amount and polymer concentration. Subsequently, these results will be characterized using Raman spectroscopy for solid products and NMR for liquid products. These results will be presented at the annual meeting.