Amélia S.F. Santos

Reprocessability of PHB in extrusion: ATR-FTIR, tensile tests and thermal studies

1Department of Materials Engineering – DEMat, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte – UFRN, Natal, RN, Brazil 2Department of Materials Engineering – DEMa, Universidade Federal de São Carlos – UFSCar, São Carlos, SP, Brazil 3Department of Materials Engineering – DEMAT, Universidade Federal da Paraíba – UFPB, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil 4Department of Chemistry – DQ, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte – UFRN, Natal, RN, Brazil 5Institute of Science and Technology – ICT, Universidade Federal de São Paulo – UNIFESP, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil

Evaluation of Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE) Followed by Post-condensation Step (SSP) to Extract Contaminants from PET Flakes

Aiming to reduce the overall energy consumption of PET super-clean technologies, without using hazardous and large amounts of solvents, this work deals with accelerated solvent extraction followed by solid state polymerization (ASE-SSP) as an alternative way to decontaminate recycled PET for direct food contact applications. The main effects of the extraction ASE parameters (temperature, flow rate and pressure) in extraction efficiency of toluene and benzophenone, used as model contaminants, from PET were evaluated using a first-order fractional experimental design. Subsequently, PET chips were submitted to a SSP process to remove residual acetone, used as the extractor solvent, from PET. Extraction yield was quantified by gas chromatography with flame ionization detector (GC-FID). Results showed that the only parameter that affects negatively the decontamination process was an increase in temperature. Moreover, the SSP process helped to remove residual acetone from PET reaching decontamination levels as high as the FDA recommendations for direct food contact packaging.