Materials

<p style="text-align: justify;">The emerging chemical recycling technologies for plastic waste have proved to turn plastic waste into plastic resin. These technologies are not limited to pyrolysis alone, there are also solvent-based purification and depolymerization techniques.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The question here is, 'can waste to plastic turn non-producers of plastic resin into producers?'</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Factors that Influence Adoption of Plastic Recycling</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">For plastic recycling to be financially attractive, there must be a workable margin for everyone in the plastic recycling chain. This margin should include the municipality workers, sorters, processors, and mechanical and chemical recyclers. The best solution can vary from one geography to another.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Some major cities are located near the petrochemical production units. This may be one of the reasons that lead producers of plastic resins to the chemical recyclers.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Improving the links between the consumers, municipalities, and petrochemical production units can help achieve the government-established recycling targets.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The economy of scale of the chemical recycling plants are still under escalation for the non-producers of plastic resins.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">While feeding a solid feedstock with different types of feeding mechanisms, reactors, heat transfer techniques, and improvements will certainly make a difference in terms of process efficiency. A green field waste to plastics using chemical recycling is the new hope.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>This article was contributed by our expert <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ihabyahia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ihab Yahia</a></em></span></p><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em><br /></em><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Frequently Asked Questions Answered by Ihab Yahia</span></span></h3><h2><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1. What are the different types of chemical recycling?</span></h2><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There are different types of chemical recycling techniques depending on the composition and type of the feed from plastic waste, it can be differentiated as follows:</span></p><ul><li style="list-style-type: none;"><ul><li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">PET: (Glycolosis - Methanolysis- Hydrolysis - Aminolysis)&nbsp;</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">PS: (Dissolution - Pyrolysis - Thermochemical recycling)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mixed polyolefins: (Pyrolysis - Gasification - Hydrocracking)</span></li></ul></li></ul><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Each type of chemical recycling gives a different output, thus further processing is needed to obtain monomer or higher value hydrocarbons, most likely refining and petrochemicals process</span></p><h2><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2. What is the difference between mechanical and chemical recycling?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Chemical recycling is also named upcycling as it turns plastic waste, by chemical or thermal cracking, to hydrocarbons that have the capability to produce monomers and thus to virgin polymers. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mechanical recycling is also named downcycling as it turns plastic waste, by mechanical and physical transformation, to the same polymer type that have lower mechanical and optical properties then to virgin polymers.</span></p><h2><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3. Is chemical recycling the future?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Yes, chemical recycling can be a boon for increasing recycling rates and a source for feedstocks. There are a growing number of chemical recycling plants globally, moreover chemical recycling has the capability to recycle the plastics, that are otherwise hard to be mechanically recycled.</span></p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">4. How efficient is recycling?&nbsp;</span></h2><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">For chemical recycling, the estimated output of mixed plastics waste by advanced recycling such as pyrolysis gives 30% monomers, 50% pyoil, 10% gases used in the pyrolysis process and 10% chars used in construction and paving.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p>