Screening of Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes for Purification of Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Liquids

Increasing consumption rates of plastics, combined with the waste generated from their production, leads to several environmental problems. Presently, plastic recycling takes account of only about 10% of the plastic waste, which is achieved mainly through mechanical recycling. Chemical recycling met...

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Autores principales: van Lin, Rick, Sosa Fernandez, Paulina A., Visser, Tymen, de Wit, Patrick
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10534780/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37755214
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes13090792
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author van Lin, Rick
Sosa Fernandez, Paulina A.
Visser, Tymen
de Wit, Patrick
author_facet van Lin, Rick
Sosa Fernandez, Paulina A.
Visser, Tymen
de Wit, Patrick
author_sort van Lin, Rick
collection PubMed
description Increasing consumption rates of plastics, combined with the waste generated from their production, leads to several environmental problems. Presently, plastic recycling takes account of only about 10% of the plastic waste, which is achieved mainly through mechanical recycling. Chemical recycling methods, such as pyrolysis, could significantly increase overall recycling rates and reduce the need for the production of fossil-based chemicals. Produced pyrolysis oil can be used for the production of benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX) through catalytic upgrading or for the production of alkanes if used directly. Separation of high-value components in pyrolysis oil derived from plastic waste through traditional separation methods can be energy intensive. Organic solvent nanofiltration has been recognised as an alternative with very low energy consumption, as separation is not based on a phase transition. This work focuses on the screening of several (semi-) commercially available membranes using a simplified model mixture of pyrolysis oil obtained from plastics. Based on membrane performance, a selection of membranes was used to treat a feedstock obtained from the direct pyrolysis of plastics. This work shows that currently, commercial OSN membranes have promising separation performance on model mixtures while showing insufficient and non-selective separation at very low flux for complex mixtures derived from the pyrolysis of plastics. This indicates that OSN is indeed a promising technology but that membranes should likely be tailored to this specific application.
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spelling pubmed-105347802023-09-29 Screening of Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes for Purification of Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Liquids van Lin, Rick Sosa Fernandez, Paulina A. Visser, Tymen de Wit, Patrick Membranes (Basel) Article Increasing consumption rates of plastics, combined with the waste generated from their production, leads to several environmental problems. Presently, plastic recycling takes account of only about 10% of the plastic waste, which is achieved mainly through mechanical recycling. Chemical recycling methods, such as pyrolysis, could significantly increase overall recycling rates and reduce the need for the production of fossil-based chemicals. Produced pyrolysis oil can be used for the production of benzene, toluene and xylene (BTX) through catalytic upgrading or for the production of alkanes if used directly. Separation of high-value components in pyrolysis oil derived from plastic waste through traditional separation methods can be energy intensive. Organic solvent nanofiltration has been recognised as an alternative with very low energy consumption, as separation is not based on a phase transition. This work focuses on the screening of several (semi-) commercially available membranes using a simplified model mixture of pyrolysis oil obtained from plastics. Based on membrane performance, a selection of membranes was used to treat a feedstock obtained from the direct pyrolysis of plastics. This work shows that currently, commercial OSN membranes have promising separation performance on model mixtures while showing insufficient and non-selective separation at very low flux for complex mixtures derived from the pyrolysis of plastics. This indicates that OSN is indeed a promising technology but that membranes should likely be tailored to this specific application. MDPI 2023-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10534780/ /pubmed/37755214 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes13090792 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
van Lin, Rick
Sosa Fernandez, Paulina A.
Visser, Tymen
de Wit, Patrick
Screening of Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes for Purification of Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Liquids
title Screening of Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes for Purification of Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Liquids
title_full Screening of Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes for Purification of Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Liquids
title_fullStr Screening of Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes for Purification of Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Liquids
title_full_unstemmed Screening of Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes for Purification of Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Liquids
title_short Screening of Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes for Purification of Plastic Waste Pyrolysis Liquids
title_sort screening of commercial organic solvent nanofiltration membranes for purification of plastic waste pyrolysis liquids
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10534780/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37755214
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/membranes13090792
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