Only a small fraction of the plastics produced is being recycled (less than 10% in the US), with the great majority landfilled or released into the environment. Mechanical recycling currently used to recycle plastic cannot handle films which constitute about 40% of all plastic packaging. Research in our group advances solvent-based molecular recycling, whereby polymers are selectively dissolved and precipitated to achieve separation and recovery. Because the polymer chains do not break, this is a promising, low-energy, low-greenhouse gas (GHG) plastics recycling methodology.
This project addresses the recycling of multilayer films which comprise multiple layers or polymer combined into a single film to achieve consumer specifications such as preserving food and medicine, acting as oxygen or moisture barrier, and keeping products sterile. This presentation highlights the solvent-assisted delamination process that we have developed, which recovers from multilayer films the majority component polyethylene in the solid form, hence reducing greatly solvent amounts and the corresponding energy needs and GHG emissions. This presents a promising approach to recover value from the approximately 17 million metric tons of multilayer plastic films that are produced every year globally.
