One of the widely used plastics in food, consumer goods, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries is poly (ethylene terephthalate) (PET). On a global scale, PET is renowned as the most frequently recycled polymer. Thermoform PET (PET-T) must be separated from bottle-grade PET (PET-B) streams due to variations in their intrinsic viscosity (IV). This research aims to create commercial bottle-grade pellets by blending recycled PET-B and recycled PET-T. Three techniques were used to rebuild PET-B characteristics with 10-20 wt% PET-T: solid-state polymerization (SSP), chain extension, and chain extension combined with SSP. The IV values for PET-B containing 10-20% PET-T were determined. Mechanical parameters like impact strength, tensile modulus, tensile strength, and elongation at break were also tested. Furthermore, thermal characteristics like thermal degradation, crystallinity, glass transition temperature (Tg), and melting temperature (Tm) were studied. The implementation of SSP treatment and a chain extender improves the IV values of rPET blends. The use of SSP treatment and a chain extender also improved the thermo-mechanical behavior of recycled PET blends from PET-B and PET-T. The tensile strengths and Izod impact strengths of blends that had undergone chain extension and SSP were greater than those of untreated PET blends. Meanwhile, the thermal properties, such as the Tg and Tm remained unaffected by adding the chain extender and the SSP treatment. Keywords: Recycled PET, Solid-State Polymerization, Chain extenders, Reactive extrusion
Read
