AIST: PET bottles decomposed and collected at room temperature: Recycling cost reduction
-Lower the raw material temperature from the conventional 200 degrees or higher to normal temperature-
AIST:
November 8th
PET (polyethylene terephthalate) can be efficiently decomposed at room temperature and reused.
Announced successful development of new technology.
Environmental load and energy cost are greatly reduced.
It paved the way for the reproduction of new high quality PET bottles from PET bottles.
How to recycle PET bottles:
There are “material recycling” and “chemical recycling” that are melted by heat and remolded.
Material recycling:
The recovered PET bottles are separated and melted by heat.
Impurities are often mixed in.
It is difficult to obtain the same quality as the product before dissolution.
Chemical recycling:
Generally, a large amount of chemicals and high temperature treatment are required.
The cost is high and the environmental load is large.
What is AIST’s new method?
The method developed by AIST is
Although it is chemical recycling, it does not require a large amount of chemicals or high temperature treatment.
Commercial beverage PET bottles are crushed into flakes into a sample.
methanol,
Dimethyl carbonate,
Alkaline catalyst lithium methoxyde,
If mixed in an appropriate ratio and left at room temperature for 3 hours, 90% or more can be decomposed.
All PET can be decomposed when the reaction temperature is set to 50 degrees.
99% separation with easy purification:
in this way,
More than 99% of dimethyl terephthalate can be separated by simple purification.
Ethylene glycol is trapped in dimethyl carbonate and recovered at a high rate.
Separation of dimethyl terephthalate:
The separated dimethyl terephthalate can be processed into a PET resin.
In addition, dimethyl terephthalate can be reused as an electrolytic solution for lithium ion batteries.
Lithium methoxydo:
After the reaction, it precipitates as an insoluble matter, so it can be easily separated and recovered.
– TechCrunch Japan
https://jp.techcrunch.com/2021/11/09/aist-pet-recycle/
AIST: Developed a method for using PET bottles as raw materials at room temperature.
Chemical recycling technology using catalysts to promote a resource-recycling society
Development points
Developed catalyst technology to efficiently use PET resin as a raw material at room temperature
By devising a reaction method, we succeeded in lowering the temperature of raw material from the conventional 200 ° C or higher to room temperature.
Expected to reduce the cost of “bottle-to-bottle” recycling of PET bottles
https://www.aist.go.jp/aist_j/press_release/pr2021/pr20211108/pr20211108.html