Abstract
Plastic fuel tanks of vehicles are typically made of high-density polyethylene
(HDPE). The easiness of the dismantling procedure from end-of-life vehicles
and the intrinsic recyclability of HDPE allow them to be accounted in
principle in the “white list” of recyclable components. However, the strong
contamination and the odor produced by the volatile (VOCs) and semi volatile (SVOCs) organic compounds, which have been absorbed during the
service life, drastically hinder the use of this end-of-life material. This aspect
reduces its actual recyclability, especially in higher-value applications. The
aim of this scientific work is the achievement of an innovative extrusion
process, specifically designed for the stripping out of these organic
contaminants. An in-depth analytic approach is also reported to identify their
nature and fraction, as a way for ranking the effect of the different processing
conditions which have been tested. The developed extrusion process uses a
co-rotating twin-screw extruder with degassing points and the injection of
water as medium for desorbing the organic contaminants. The analytic
approach is based on headspace (HS) sampling associated with gas
chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometric detection (GC-MS). The
multivariate approach of the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is applied
on the entire dataset collected in the experiments, including the HS-GC-MS
data, the different process parameters and the mechanical and thermal data.
As a result, the effect of the process conditions and all the organic
contaminants present in the material are identified. The developed extrusion
process allows to obtain a material with higher opportunity to be used in
applications which require enhanced performance and, therefore, to be
considered effectively recyclable, further reducing the environmental impact
of the end-of-life vehicles.
Lingua originale | Inglese |
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Numero di pagine | 447 |
Stato di pubblicazione | Pubblicato - 2022 |
Evento | XXIX Congresso della Divisione di Chimica Analitica della Società Chimica Italiana - Milazzo (Messina) Durata: 1 gen 2022 → … |
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???event.eventtypes.event.conference??? | XXIX Congresso della Divisione di Chimica Analitica della Società Chimica Italiana |
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Città | Milazzo (Messina) |
Periodo | 1/01/22 → … |
Keywords
- VOC reduction
- fuel tanks recyclability
- HS-GC-MS