A New Look at the Chemical Recycling of Polypropylene: Thermal Oxidative Destruction in Aqueous Oxygen-Enriched Medium

Recycling of plastic waste, in particular polypropylene, represents one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. Despite the promise of chemical methods for recycling polypropylene, they usually require a high temperature and are energy-intensive. In this work, we investigated the oxidative thermolysis of polypropylene in aqueous media. This approach rendered it possible to carry out the decomposition of the polymer at a comparatively low temperature (150 °C). It was shown that among the tested, the most promising aqueous medium for the decomposition of polypropylene is water saturated with gaseous oxygen at an elevated pressure (14 bar) and at a temperature of 150 °C. In such an environment, polypropylene was converted mostly to acetic acid (up to 1.3 g/g acetic acid to starting polypropylene mass ratio). Moreover, methanol, formic acid, and propionic acid were also detected as the products. Finally, the applicability of the proposed recycling method to real polypropylene waste was shown.