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1. Introduction
The enormous and escalating volume of waste from the ubiquitous polyethylene-based plastics1 might cause severe negative
environmental impact on life on earth. Since plastics offer
features such as light weight, strength, heat resistance, high
convenience, and low cost, which make them versatile for business and consumer uses, it would be impractical to ban them
entirely. An additional reason for the retention of plastics is that
they are frequently the best all-round environmental option for
many applications. Although a number of communities
encourage the public to recycle these plastics, only a small
percentage of recyclable plastic waste actually reaches recycling
facilities; the rest ends up as waste in burial sites across the globe
or goes for incineration. Incinerating polymer waste (PW) is
comparatively expensive and could harm the environment.
Nowadays, extensive collection, transportation, separation
and recycling facilities are available for processing a wide range
of thermoplastic products. The process includes densification,
grinding, shredding, and blending. Mixing chemically different
a
Intense Pulse Neutron Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne,
IL, 60439, USA. E-mail: pol@anl.gov
b
Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Department of Energy, SC-22.1/
Germantown Building, 1000 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC,
20585
Environmental impact
The escalating volume of waste polyethylene-based plastics might cause stern negative environmental impacts on life on earth. Thus,
in addition to conventional recycling facilities for polymer waste (PW), environment friendly innovative solutions are required to
deal with PW in the short term. This paper describes a pioneering solvent-free process that transforms low- and high-density
polyethylene PW into MWCNTs, value added products.
This journal is The Royal Society of Chemistry 2010
Fig. 2 (a) Digital image of HDPE (inset the arrangement of PE groups) PW; (b) field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) image; (c) HRSEM image of as-prepared MWCNTs using a mixture of HDPE and CoAc; (d) digital image of LDPE (inset shows the arrangement of PE groups) PW;
(e) FE-SEM of MWCNTs prepared from LDPE; and (f) energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) measurements of as-prepared MWCNTs fabricated from
LDPE with CoAc catalyst (inset shows powder X-ray diffraction [XRD] pattern).
that works in the following manner: for the length of the bag,
polyethylene molecules (inset Fig. 2a) are arranged in the longchain direction, allowing maximum lengthwise stretch and possessing greater strength. Complete conversion of HDPE into
MWCNTs requires a minimum of 20 wt% CoAc catalyst.
Amounts below 20 wt% grew only part of the carbon inside the
reactor as MWCNTs; the rest fabricated into carbon spheres. In
the presence of dissociated carbonaceous species of PW,
MWCNTs continue to grow around the metallic core above
600 C at 1000 psi pressure. As shown in Fig. 2b, the MWCNTs
grow outwards forming bunches of 23 mm size. Each bunch is
comprised of hundreds of MWCNTs growing outwards.
This journal is The Royal Society of Chemistry 2010
Conclusions
We have demonstrated a solvent-free, reproducible process for
generating MWCNTs through thermal degradation of waste
high- and low-density polyethylene. Systematic morphological
and structural characterizations have been carried out, showing
This journal is The Royal Society of Chemistry 2010
the conducting, magnetic, and sorption properties of the resulting materials. The masses formed through thermolysis of PW,
which creates autogenic pressure, were measured in situ, and the
reaction mechanism for the growth of MWCNTs was postulated
on the basis of the data obtained.
Acknowledgements
Published on 23 November 2009. Downloaded by Universitas Indonesia on 04/10/2016 03:36:09.
This work benefited from the use of the facilities at the Intense
Pulsed Neutron Source, Center for Nanoscale Materials, and
Electron Microscopy Center at Argonne National Laboratory,
supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science,
Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC0206CH11357 by UChicago Argonne, LLC. We acknowledge
Nada Dimitrijevic of the Chemistry division at Argonne
National Laboratory for the EPR measurement of the
MWCNTs.