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Estimating Plastic Flows in the U.S. - Processes for Recycling PET
Citation:
Smith, Raymond L. AND S. Takkellapati. Estimating Plastic Flows in the U.S. - Processes for Recycling PET. AIChE Annual Meeting - Virtual, NA, November 15 - 19, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
This abstract describes a presentation for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, for the National Meeting to be held in November of 2021. The work presented is based on research aimed at supporting Sustainable Materials Management in EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is a post-consumer material stream where certain components are recycled. Determining the current flows of plastics through Material Recovery Facilities (MRF), recycling processes, and conversion into products can raise awareness of these streams of interest. From the analysis one can consider where post-consumer plastic ends up. What fraction is recycled? What products are recycled? And into what products is it made? Knowledge about these flows can support efforts in Sustainable Materials Management, where individual generation, recycling, composting, combustion with energy recovery, and landfilling flows are tracked within the non-hazardous waste management hierarchy.
Description:
Post-consumer use plastic can be employed as a feedstock in chemical processes, but first one needs an understanding of the amount and purity of these recycle streams. The same information supports the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s report on Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures. This report includes information on municipal solid waste (MSW) generation, recycling, composting, combustion with energy recovery, and landfilling. Plastics have been identified as key components in post-consumer material flows and worthy of tracking. In this effort throughputs for material recovery facilities (MRFs) around the country are identified with the intent of modeling input-output flows. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a plastic of particular interest because it is the most widely recycled. PET is used in plastic bottles, thermoforms for food packaging, carpeting, and textiles, but only PET bottles are regularly recycled. Post-consumer PET flows through MRFs and specific recycling processes. These processes use resources and produce environmental releases, which along with the recycled flow amounts and purities describe the PET recycling system, finally leading through chemical engineered conversion into recycled PET products. This system has the potential to provide an example of a circular economy, where materials are kept in use and only downcycled as appropriate.