from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Polystyrene (PS) is an important plastic material, which is widely used in packaging, home, construction, electrical appliances, medical equipment etc. The widespread use of PS generates large amounts of PS wastes, which is due to poor recycling rates globally end up in landfills as well as in the oceans. The increasing amounts of wastes polystyrene and other wastes plastics thus represent a serious threat to the environment, and also to human and animal health. Chemical recycling is an environmentally friendly approach that can be applied for the recycling of plastics. For chemical recycling, thermal or thermo-catalytic pyrolysis/degradation can be used. During the degradation process, polymeric materials are converted into their monomers or other valuable compounds. This paper deals with the synthesis of α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles and their use as catalyst in thermo-catalytic degradation of PS in a semi-batch reactor. The aim was to study the influence of synthesis parameters on the catalytic properties of α-Fe2O3 in PS degradation. The α-Fe2O3 catalyst samples were prepared by the chemical precipitation method using FeCl3.6H2O as a precursor salt and NaOH as precipitating agent and by calcining the precipitates at different temperatures. All catalyst samples prepared were characterized by XRD and physisorption of nitrogen. It is shown that by increasing the calcination temperature of precipitates, pure α-Fe2O3 (hematite phase) can be obtained. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that PS degradation using pure hematite as catalyst in comparison with mixed phase or non-catalytic degradation gives higher yields of oil and styrene monomer.
Keywords: Degradation, chemical recycling, polystyrene, catalyst, pyrolysis© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.