Management of plastic waste using activated glass

Abstract

Social upgradation results more postconsumer glass and plastic waste and continuously demand new techniques for their management. This research proposes a new waste to waste management strategy and reports a new technique to use waste glass for polyolefin degradation. For this purpose waste glass is activated by mechanochemical treatment. Activation involves the use of following two strategies: i Thermal and ii thermionic. Thermal technique includes treatment of glass powder at various calcination temperature viz. 450 0C, 500 0C and 550 0C. For thermionic, glass powder is treated with fluoride reagent F- and NH4+. Activation is characterized by pH metry, FTIR, XRD, BET and image analysis. The activated glass powder is used for the degradation of polyethylene and polypropylene. The resultant products are identified by physical parameter and GC MS analysis. Certain improvement in the product quality is achieved by selectivity towards more alkane fraction. newline newline newline