Chemical Recovery Of Flexible Polyurethane
Foam Wastes
Author(s)
C. Molero, M. J. Ramos, A. de Lucas & J. F. RodrÃguez
Abstract
The development of a chemical process for the recovery of polyols from flexible
polyurethane foam wastes with enough quality to be reutilized in foaming has
been a major challenge for scientists during recent years. In that way the
objective of chemical recycling of PU wastes is the recovery of its major
constituent, the polyol, in an environmental friendly way that is performed with
the lowest cost and without hazardous residues production. The glycolysis of PU
wastes in the presence of a large excess of glycolitic agent allows one to obtain a
polyol rich upper phase and a bottom phase containing mainly glycol and
isocyanate derivatives. Different metal octoates derived from cycloaliphatic
carboxylic acids can be used as the catalyst with suitable catalytic activity. The
optimization of process conditions has demonstrated that there is a narrow
window of process conditions (relation between phases, temperature, catalyst,
etc) in which the split phase glycolysis can be carried out. The recovered polyols
have to be subjected to purification by aqueous liquid-liquid extraction before
refoaming in a conventional formulation mixed with fresh ones in a large range
of proportions. The excess of glycolyzing agent in the bottom phase has to be
returned to the cycle by vacuum distillation. The vacuum residue containing the
isocyanate derivatives can be applied as an initiator in the synthesis of rigid
polyols, allowing the complete use of the glycolyzates from PU recycling.
Keywords: glycolysis, PU wastes, octoates, plastic recycling.
1 Introduction
Since polyurethanes (PU) were discovered in 1937, it has turned out to be one of
the most important groups of plastics. They are produced by the reaction of an
Keywords
glycolysis, PU wastes, octoates, plastic recycling
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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