Diatomite/Cu/Al layered double hydroxide hybrid composites for polyethylene degradation

Nengshuo Fu; Shuhua Zhang; Yingying Ma; Zhuo Yang; Weijun Liu

doi:10.1039/c9ra10940d

Diatomite/Cu/Al layered double hydroxide hybrid composites for polyethylene degradation

RSC Adv. 2020 Mar 6;10(17):9808-9813. doi: 10.1039/c9ra10940d.

Authors

Nengshuo Fu¹, Shuhua Zhang¹, Yingying Ma¹, Zhuo Yang¹, Weijun Liu²

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science Shanghai 201620 China zsh_7474@126.com.
² College of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science Shanghai 201620 China.

Abstract

A diatomite/Cu/Al layered double hydroxide hybrid composite (DI-LDH) was synthesized using the hydrothermal method. The synthesized DI-LDH composites were characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method. Polyethylene degradation over DI-LDH was studied in a batch reactor. DI-LDH showed layered structures, indicating that the diatomite/Cu/Al double hydroxide hybrid was successfully synthesized. A significant decrease in the degradation temperature and the released amounts of CO and CO₂ was observed in the DI-LDH catalytic degradation reaction, which indicated that DI-LDH was helpful for the polyethylene degradation reaction. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results suggested that the reaction of Cu²⁺ → Cu⁺ occurred in polyethylene catalytic pyrolysis, which resulted in the decrease in the released CO amount. DI-LDH may be a potential environmental catalyst that can be applied to treat LDPE waste.