Environmentally friendly chemical recycling of poly(bisphenol-A carbonate) through phase transfer-catalysed alkaline hydrolysis under microwave irradiation

CeO2 nanocatalysts for the chemical recycling of polycarbonate

“…S1). When PC materials simply depolymerize to its contexture monomer, CO 2 is also produced with BPA monomer [19,20,[23][24][25][26]. In this study, the CO 2 product is not monitored.…”

“…Moreover, homogeneous catalytic reagents have been used to accelerate the reaction at low temperatures [14][15][16][17]. Regarding the chemical recycling of PC materials, the materials were depolymerized via hydrolysis in the presence of Na 2 CO 3 [18], NaOH [19], and manganese acetate [20] as catalytic reagents, via alcoholysis [21,22], and via glycolysis [23]. The chemical recycling of PC materials was also performed using high pressure and high temperature steam [24] or fluidized bed reactor via thermal pyrolysis [25] and via steam hydrolysis [26].…”

Polymer Degradation Under Microwave Irradiation

“…Therefore, its recycling using some environmentally friendly degradation method is of paramount importance. With this aim, microwave irradiation was employed by Tsintzou et al [42] to study the chemical recycling of PC in relatively mild experimental conditions that do not require large amounts of chemicals or energy. The method of hydrolysis in an alkaline (NaOH) solution was applied to poly(bisphenol-A carbonate) to depolymerize it into its starting monomer, BPA.…”

“…A drop in activation energy for an increase in temperature indicates that the controlling mechanism of reaction is changing. The lower activation energy observed at temperatures above the T g of the polymer was attributed to the more elastomeric nature of the polymer at these conditions, meaning that the polymer could be easily penetrated by the ionic pairs of the PTC with the hydroxyl anions and become swollen, leading thus to a more rapid degradation [42,43].…”

“…Depolymerization as high as 85% was achieved at 160 C using a 10% NaOH solution after microwave irradiation for 10 min [42].…”