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Language: English

Conflict of Interest: In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Publication history: Received March 21, 2001
Accepted November 22, 2001

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Triboelectrostatic Separation of PVC Materials from Mixed Plastics for Waste Plastic Recycling

Jae-Keun Lee^† Jin-Hyouk Shin

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University, San 30, Changjeon-Dong, Keumjeong-Ku, Busan 609-735, Korea

Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering, March 2002, 19(2), 267-272(6), 10.1007/BF02698412

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Abstract

This study covers the triboelectrostatic separation of polyvinylchloride (PVC) materials from mixed plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene (PS). The PVC material generates hazardous hydrogen chloride gas resulting from the combustion in the incinerators. The laboratory scale triboelectrostatic separation system consists of a fluidized-bed tribocharger, a separation chamber, a collection chamber and a controller. Negative and positive surface charges can be imparted to the PVC and PET particles, respectively, due to the difference of triboelectric charging series between the particles in the fluidized-bed tribocharger. They can be separated by passing through an external electric field. A highly concentrated PVC (91.9%) can be recovered with a yield of about 96.1% from the mixture of PVC and PET materials in a single stage of processing. For the removal of PVC from the two-component mixed plastics such as PVC/PET, PVC/PP, PVC/PE or PVC/PS, separation_x000D_ results show the recovery of 96-99% with the pure extract content in excess of 90%. The triboelectrostatic separation system using the fluidized-bed tribocharger shows the potential to be an effective method for removing PVC from mixed plastics for waste plastic recycling.

Keywords

PVC/PET Electrostatic Separation Tribocharger Extract Content Yield Waste Plastic Recycling

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