Upcycling waste plastics into carbon nanomaterials: A review

Abstract

Polymer production and utilization are currently widespread and have greatly improved people's standards of living. However, due to their stable and nonbiodegradable nature, postconsumer polymers pose challenging issues to the environment and ecosystems. Efforts are being made not only to contain the generation of polymer wastes and associated littering but, also, to find ways of utilizing them sustainably. Aside from mechanical recycling, which turns postconsumer polymers into new polymer products, and thermal recycling, which releases the thermal energy contained within waste plastics through combustion, chemical recycling converts waste polymers into feedstock for chemicals/materials/fuels production. This manuscript reviews prior work on a special application of the particular chemical recycling route that converts polymers into carbon-based nanomaterials. These materials feature extraordinary physical and chemical properties with tremendous applications potential. However, their production processes are both resourceand energy-intensive. Yet, by taking advantage of the high carbon content of waste polymers, as well as of their high energy content, a cost-effective, environmentally-friendly, and self-sustaining production of carbon nanomaterials can be achieved. V C 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 39931.

Styrene recovery from polystyrene by flash pyrolysis in a conical spouted bed reactor

“…Commodity plastics reached a global production of 288 million tons in 2012, from which 25.2 million tons of post-consumer plastic wastes have been recovered in the EU (Zhuo and Levendis, 2014). This means a serious environmental issue given that 38% of this stream is disposed in landfills and 35% is used for energy (Plastics, 2015).…”

Porous Carbon Nanosheets Prepared from Plastic Wastes for Supercapacitors

“…Plastics buried in landfills release toxic substances into soil and water, and plastics incinerated produce poisonous gases and carbon dioxide. 3,4 It is significant for ecological sustainable development and protection of the environment to search for alternative treatments for waste plastics.…”

The thermal, optical, flame retardant, and morphological consequence of embedding diacid‐capped ZnO into the recycled PET matrix

“…Chemical recycling refers to operations that aim to chemically degrade the collected plastics waste into its monomers or other basic chemicals. [4][5][6][7] By dissolution/reprecipitation recycling process it is possible to reuse the waste PET by dissolving the waste PET in an appropriate solvent and then reprecipitation of PET using nonsolvent thorough washing of the material obtained, and drying. 8,9 PET is a kind of low cost engineering plastic that is in common usage in many products nowadays and is easy recyclable.…”