Page 69 - Plastics News May 2024

PRODUCT NEWS

ronment, posing minimal risk to living growing interest in exploring their role rise, it’s crucial to develop sustainable
organisms and ecosystems. However, in the circular economy. Wahlström strategies for their end-of-life handling
this also means that traditional dis- and colleagues have proposed a com- to minimize environmental impact and
posal methods such as incineration prehensive approach to FPs’ lifecycle promote resource efficiency.
may warrant further investigation to management, emphasizing the impor- Source – Plastics Engineering
ensure their effectiveness. Moreover, tance of recycling and exploring inno-
while FPs generally meet the Polymer- vative depolymerization techniques.
of-Low-Concern criteria, there’s a As the demand for FPs continues to

Polypropylene Recycling from Disposable Face Masks

mental and techno-economic analysis
of this method to evaluate its feasibility
compared to virgin PP production.

Recycling PP via STRAP Method
and Decolorization
STRAP method enabled the extraction
and separation of approximately 90
wt% of PP within a dissolution time of
5 minutes. Additionally, N, N-Dimeth-
ylacetamide facilitated the removal of
color from the recovered PP, result-
ing in a high-purity PP. The recovered
plastic exhibits thermochemical prop-
erties like those of virgin PP resin.

Diminishing Environmental Im-
pact
High-purity polypropylene from waste disposable face masks via STRAP method
and decolorization. Courtesy of Green Chemistry. Researchers conducted an environ-
mental impact assessment for the
olvent-targeted recovery and By 2023, global production of personal STRAP process, focusing on recover-
precipitation (STRAP) process protective equipment resulted in an ing polypropylene (PP) colored. This
stands out as a promising al- annual waste output between 4.68 and analysis compares the environmental
ternative to polypropylene 6.24 million tons. impacts of producing 1 kg of PP using
(PP) disposable face mask recycling. conventional methodologies against
Polypropylene (PP) predominantly
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered constitutes disposable face masks. the STRAP method. The depicted data
a significant surge in the use of dis- This plastic has a high market value but illustrates that the carbon footprint of
posable face masks as a precaution- is one of the least recycled. As a result, the STRAP process without color re-
ary measure. Although these masks the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) moval (0.57 kg CO2 eq./kg PP) is no-
are crucial for containing the spread funded research through the Center for tably diminished compared to virgin
of the virus, they have also posed a Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics resin production (2.07 kg CO2 eq./kg
new environmental challenge. People (CUWP). The work contributed to de- PP). Remarkably, the STRAP process
worldwide use millions of disposable signing the STRAP process of PP from engenders approximately 72% fewer
face masks, and many of them even- disposable face masks. Furthermore, emissions. This underscores its po-
tually wind up in landfills and dumps. researchers developed an environ- tential as a sustainable alternative for

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