Upcycling of Polymer Waste

Engineering Chemistry Department of PITM (Priyatam Institute of Technology and Management) is one of the leading Department to enhance major and minor research projects which can be directly taken up by the industries . One of the major project that the department is dealing with is UPCYCLING OF POLYMER WASTE . In the recent past, India has witnessed a substantial growth in the consumption of plastics resulting in an increased production of plastic waste. Out of the total plastics consumption in India polyolefin contributes 60% share . Packaging is the major plastics consuming sector, which accounts for 42% of the total plastic.

The total plastics consumption is projected to grow by a factor of 6 between 2000 and 2030. Forty-seven percent of the total plastics waste generated is currently recycled in India, which is much higher as compared to most of the other countries . Due to the increasing share of long-life products in the economy, and consequently in the volume of waste generated, the share of recycling will decrease to 35% over the next three decades. The total waste available for disposal (excluding recycling) will increase at least 10-fold up to the year 2030 from its current level of 1.3 billion tones which will a great problem .

In Indore city alone there is nearly one million tons of polymer waste per year .
Out of this 40% is used in recycling to produce low quality polymer for packing and trash material .
Remaining 40% is dumped in trenching grounds and 20% is loitered on side roads and garbage storages .

This discarded plastics in the form of thin bags is eaten up by cows and other animals getting collected in their body in the form of lumps and developing cancer
Plastic bags kill large numbers of wildlife and livestock when they get caught in fences, trees, bushes and are mistakenly eaten by these animals leading to suffocation or blockage of digestive track.
In marine environments plastic bags are responsible for the deaths of marine birds, sea turtles, dolphins, seals and whales who mistake the plastic bag for jellyfish. They ingest the bags and then die from intestinal blockage; some starving to death because plastic in an animal’s gut can prevent digestion and lead to a slow and painful death
Polymer waste take longest time to decompose (about 20 -1000 years) . The polymer waste dumped in trenching grounds do remain in residual form (about 50%) as undecomposed material for several hundred years .In this way the soil chemistry is polluted . PITM under the able guidance of its researchers has taken up this problem and are effectively working to develop Upcycling Technique to prepare “NANO TUBES” and higher grade of plastics of commercial importance . Brief Details are as follows

Several attempts have been made till date and some solutions have been proposed yet none is cheaper and compatible to be employed on large scale .Waste plastic from throwaway carrier bags can be readily converted into carbon nanotubes

This investigation describes a solvent-free process that converts Polymer Waste such as low-density (LD) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) into multi-walled carbon nanotubes MWCNTs via thermal dissociation in the presence of chemical catalysts in a closed system under autogenic pressure. Some work using some expensive material has already been done in this area which cannot be applied on large scale . We are working on an alternatively cheaper and easily available catalyst so that this method of upcycling of polymer wastes can be employed to meet the demand of disposal of enormous amount of polymer waste
The composition, morphology, and atomic structure of the as-obtained MWCNTs will be characterized employing advanced structural, spectroscopic, and imaging techniques. The unique magnetic and electrical conductivity behaviours of as-prepared MWCNTs are to be measured to assess their potential applications as advanced materials.

This reproducible process presents an opportunity to use Polymer Waste as a feedstock for the production of MWCNTs, industrially significant value-added products. Among the known methods for the fabrication of MWCNTs, the present controlled dissociation of PW is one of the inexpensive and straightforward methods.
This research work can be the solution for the blazing problem of disintegration and disposal of the widely produced polymer wastes . It becomes our moral responsibility to promote the research work in this direction in the interest of humanity and environment .
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