Issue 40, 2011

Comprehensive and sustainable recycling of polymer nanocomposites

Abstract

A coupled process to recycle the polystyrene (PS) polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) is introduced to synthesize ferromagnetic core@shell Ni@C nanoparticles (NPs) and simultaneously to produce useful chemical radicals or liquid fuels. The PNCs reinforced with core@shell Ni@NiO NPs are prepared by the solvent extraction method. The Ni@NiO NPs are found to have significant catalytic effects on the pyrolysis of PS. The pyrolysis pathway changes from radical generation and β-scission for PS to radical generation, recombination and hydrogenation for the PNCs. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) results confirm the same gas products from pure PS and its Ni@NiO PNCs. However, for the liquid products, more saturated products were obtained from the PNCs than those from pure PS due to the catalytic hydrogenation of the Ni NPs. A significantly large magnetization (25.0 emu g−1), anti-corrosion and high specific surface area (236.68 m2 g−1) were observed in the formed core–shell NPs.

Graphical abstract: Comprehensive and sustainable recycling of polymer nanocomposites

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
01 Jul 2011
Accepted
16 Aug 2011
First published
14 Sep 2011

J. Mater. Chem., 2011,21, 16239-16246

Comprehensive and sustainable recycling of polymer nanocomposites

J. Zhu, S. Wei, Y. Li, S. Pallavkar, H. Lin, N. Haldolaarachchige, Z. Luo, D. P. Young and Z. Guo, J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 16239 DOI: 10.1039/C1JM13044G

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