Towards the Development of an In-Process Quality Monitoring System for Polyethylene Recyclates by Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography Ion Mobility Spectrometry
André Ahrens, Madina Shamsuyeva, Hans-Josef Endres, Stefan Zimmermann
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Over the past few decades, the topic of recycling has become increasingly prominent in the field of sustainable materials and circular economy. One significant challenge is the physical separation of different types of plastics to obtain recyclates of one plastic type as pure as possible with comparable quality and properties to those of virgin material. Given the substantial effort involved in such separation, small amounts of contamination from other plastics may be tolerated. However, these contaminations must be monitored to ensure high-level recyclate quality. In recent years, compact, low-cost ion mobility spectrometers (IMS) with high analytical performance have been developed, and have thus become widely used in a variety of sensing applications. Due to their high sensitivity, IMS are particularly suited for detecting lowest concentration levels of various compounds, as required for the detection of impurities in recyclate quality monitoring. When coupled to a miniature gas chromatograph (GC), GC-IMS reach even higher separation power while being still compact. To bring recyclate samples to the gas phase, pyrolysis (Py) is used in this work. A first feasibility study was conducted to assess the potential of such a pyrolysis–gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometer (Py-GC-IMS) with the objective of detecting contaminations of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in polyethylene (PE) recyclates. The study clearly demonstrates the ability to identify PET-related fingerprints while suppressing the PE background matrix by design so that Py-GC-IMS seems a promising approach for in-process monitoring PET contaminations in PE recyclates.
过去几十年来,回收利用这一话题在可持续材料和循环经济领域日益突出。其中一个重大挑战是如何对不同类型的塑料进行物理分离,以获得尽可能纯净的一种塑料回收物,其质量和性能与原始材料相当。由于这种分离需要耗费大量精力,因此可以容忍来自其他塑料的少量污染。但是,必须对这些污染进行监控,以确保回收物的高质量。近年来,具有高分析性能的紧凑型低成本离子迁移率光谱仪(IMS)得到了发展,并因此在各种传感应用中得到了广泛应用。由于灵敏度高,离子迁移谱仪特别适合检测各种化合物的最低浓度水平,这也是检测回收物质量监测中杂质的要求。当与微型气相色谱仪(GC)联用时,GC-IMS 可以达到更高的分离能力,同时结构仍然紧凑。为了使回收样品进入气相,这项工作采用了热解(Py)技术。为评估这种热解-气相色谱-离子迁移谱仪(Py-GC-IMS)的潜力,进行了首次可行性研究,目的是检测聚乙烯(PE)回收物中的聚对苯二甲酸乙二酯(PET)污染。该研究清楚地表明,Py-GC-IMS 能够识别与 PET 有关的指纹,同时通过设计抑制 PE 背景基质,因此,Py-GC-IMS 似乎是一种很有前途的方法,可用于在加工过程中监测 PE 回收料中的 PET 污染物。
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Polymers and the Environment fills the need for an international forum in this diverse and rapidly expanding field. The journal serves a crucial role for the publication of information from a wide range of disciplines and is a central outlet for the publication of high-quality peer-reviewed original papers, review articles and short communications. The journal is intentionally interdisciplinary in regard to contributions and covers the following subjects - polymers, environmentally degradable polymers, and degradation pathways: biological, photochemical, oxidative and hydrolytic; new environmental materials: derived by chemical and biosynthetic routes; environmental blends and composites; developments in processing and reactive processing of environmental polymers; characterization of environmental materials: mechanical, physical, thermal, rheological, morphological, and others; recyclable polymers and plastics recycling environmental testing: in-laboratory simulations, outdoor exposures, and standardization of methodologies; environmental fate: end products and intermediates of biodegradation; microbiology and enzymology of polymer biodegradation; solid-waste management and public legislation specific to environmental polymers; and other related topics.