Methods of PET Recycling

Abstract Recycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is extremely important due to the growing use of this material in many applications. The chapter presents data on PET consumption and the amount of waste generated resulting from its use. The main methods of PET recycling, such as chemical, mechanical and energetic ones, were characterized. PET chemical recycling was divided into the following categories of reactions: hydrolysis, glycolysis, alcoholysis and aminolysis, and each of these groups has been characterized. On the basis of the available literature, the methods used to carry out the reaction, the conditions of their conduct and the synthesis products obtained were presented. Chemical recycling has received the most attention because of the fact that a large section of this book concerns the work done by our team in this area.