Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy
Plastic waste generation has become an important problem that critically affects marine and oceans environments. Fishing nets gear usually have a relatively short lifespan, and are abandoned, discarded and lost, what makes them one of the largest generators of ocean plastic waste. Recycled polyolefi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8470735/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34578056 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym13183155 |
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author | Juan, Rafael Domínguez, Carlos Robledo, Nuria Paredes, Beatriz Galera, Sara García-Muñoz, Rafael A. |
author_facet | Juan, Rafael Domínguez, Carlos Robledo, Nuria Paredes, Beatriz Galera, Sara García-Muñoz, Rafael A. |
author_sort | Juan, Rafael |
collection | PubMed |
description | Plastic waste generation has become an important problem that critically affects marine and oceans environments. Fishing nets gear usually have a relatively short lifespan, and are abandoned, discarded and lost, what makes them one of the largest generators of ocean plastic waste. Recycled polyolefin resins from fishing nets (rFN), especially from polyethylene (PE), have poor properties due to the presence of contaminants and/or excessive degradation after its lifetime. These reasons limit the use of these recycled resins. This work aims to study the incorporation of recycled fishing nets PE-made to different grades of virgin PE, in order to evaluate the potential use of these rFN in the development of new products. The recovered fishing nets have been fully characterized to evaluate its properties after the collection and recycling process. Then, different PE virgin resins have been mechanically blended with the recovered fishing nets at different recycling contents to study its feasibility for fishing nets or packaging applications. Critical mechanical properties for these applications, as the elongation at break, impact strength or environmental stress cracking resistance have been deeply evaluated. Results show important limitations for the manufacture of fibers from recycled PE fishing nets due to the presence of inorganic particles from the marine environment, which restricts the use of rFN for its original application. However, it is proved that a proper selection of PE raw resins, to be used in the blending process, allows other possible applications, such as non-food contact bottles, which open up new ways for using the fishing nets recyclates, in line with the objectives pursued by the Circular Economy of Plastics. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8470735 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84707352021-09-27 Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy Juan, Rafael Domínguez, Carlos Robledo, Nuria Paredes, Beatriz Galera, Sara García-Muñoz, Rafael A. Polymers (Basel) Article Plastic waste generation has become an important problem that critically affects marine and oceans environments. Fishing nets gear usually have a relatively short lifespan, and are abandoned, discarded and lost, what makes them one of the largest generators of ocean plastic waste. Recycled polyolefin resins from fishing nets (rFN), especially from polyethylene (PE), have poor properties due to the presence of contaminants and/or excessive degradation after its lifetime. These reasons limit the use of these recycled resins. This work aims to study the incorporation of recycled fishing nets PE-made to different grades of virgin PE, in order to evaluate the potential use of these rFN in the development of new products. The recovered fishing nets have been fully characterized to evaluate its properties after the collection and recycling process. Then, different PE virgin resins have been mechanically blended with the recovered fishing nets at different recycling contents to study its feasibility for fishing nets or packaging applications. Critical mechanical properties for these applications, as the elongation at break, impact strength or environmental stress cracking resistance have been deeply evaluated. Results show important limitations for the manufacture of fibers from recycled PE fishing nets due to the presence of inorganic particles from the marine environment, which restricts the use of rFN for its original application. However, it is proved that a proper selection of PE raw resins, to be used in the blending process, allows other possible applications, such as non-food contact bottles, which open up new ways for using the fishing nets recyclates, in line with the objectives pursued by the Circular Economy of Plastics. MDPI 2021-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8470735/ /pubmed/34578056 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym13183155 Text en © 2021 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 Juan, Rafael Domínguez, Carlos Robledo, Nuria Paredes, Beatriz Galera, Sara García-Muñoz, Rafael A. Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy |
title | Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy |
title_full | Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy |
title_fullStr | Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy |
title_full_unstemmed | Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy |
title_short | Challenges and Opportunities for Recycled Polyethylene Fishing Nets: Towards a Circular Economy |
title_sort | challenges and opportunities for recycled polyethylene fishing nets: towards a circular economy |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8470735/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34578056 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym13183155 |
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