Optimization of Ti-BA efficiently for the catalytic alcoholysis of waste PET using response surface methodology

Ruiyang Wen; Guoliang Shen; Yang Yu; Shijie Xu; Jie Wei; Yue Huo; Sijin Jiang

doi:10.1039/d3ra01460f

Optimization of Ti-BA efficiently for the catalytic alcoholysis of waste PET using response surface methodology

RSC Adv. 2023 Jun 8;13(25):17166-17178. doi: 10.1039/d3ra01460f. eCollection 2023 Jun 5.

Authors

Ruiyang Wen¹, Guoliang Shen¹, Yang Yu¹, Shijie Xu¹, Jie Wei¹, Yue Huo¹, Sijin Jiang¹

Affiliation

¹ School of Petrochemical Engineering, Shenyang University of Technology Liaoyang 111003 China shengl_shxy@sut.edu.cn.

Abstract

A titanium benzoate (Ti-BA) catalyst was prepared by hydrothermal method, which has an ordered eight-face structure, and was used for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) depolymerization. With bis(2-hydroxyethyl)terephthalate (BHET) as the target molecule and ethylene glycol (EG) as the solvent, the best reaction conditions for catalytic alcoholysis via a PET alcoholic solution were investigated via response surface experiments and found to be a EG/PET mass ratio of 3.59, temperature of 217 °C and reaction time of 3.3 h. Under these conditions, the amount of the catalyst required was only 2% of the mass of the PET, and the yield of BHET reached 90.01% and under the same conditions, the yield of BHET could still reach 80.1%. Based on the experimental results, the mechanism of alcoholysis, Ti-BA catalyst activated ethylene glycol deprotonation to achieve the progressive degradation of polymers. This experiment provides a reference for the degradation of polymer waste and other transesterification reactions.