Plastics provide many benefits to society. However, with plastic consumption comes plastic waste. Improper plastic waste management is a growing problem. Solvent-based purification (SBP) of waste plastics is one way to address this problem. This type of recycling method uses a selective solvent dissolution process to remove impurities from post-industrial and post-consumer plastic, thereby recovering plastics of suitable quality for reuse. The clean polymer can be recovered from the solution by precipitation. Plastics recycling via solvent-based purification is considered as a physical recycling process rather than a chemical recycling process.

Presented in this talk is the industrial status, technology review and economics of solvent-based recycling of waste plastics technology: A selective solvent dissolution-precipitation process for post-industrial polyethylene/polyamide-6 (PE/PA-6) film waste.