PET and PVC Separation by Froth Flotation

Abbasi, M., and Salari Rad, M.M.

Amirkabir University of technology
salari@aut.ac.ir

ABSTRACT
The global production of plastic has grown exponentially over recent years. Because disposal of
post consumer plastics is increasingly being constrained by legislation and escalating costs, there
is considerable demand for alternatives to disposal or landfilling (1). As a result, the
environmental effects due to plastic waste have become a challenging task.

Complete recycling of waste mixed plastics represents a goal that has yet to be achieved by the
recycling industry. The barrier to economic reuse of mixed plastic wastes, due to
incompatibilities of the properties of different polymers, is separation into pure components (2).
Physical separation techniques, such as gravity and electrostatic processes have been proposed to
separate mixed plastic wastes into individual components, each of them with an ultimate limit of
capabilities (3). For instance, the density of PVC and PET ranges from 1.32 to 1.37 g/cm3 and
1.33 to 1.37 g/cm3, respectively. Because of slight differences in densities, it is too difficult to
separate mixed PVC and PET by conventional gravity separation processes.

Selective flotation separation of the PET/PVC mixture is impossible without changing the
surface properties of one of these polymers. Both polymers exhibit almost the same degree of
hydrophobicity. In this research Tanic acid was employed as a wetting agent for selective
depression of PET during flotation. The selection of reagent and its dosage was based on the
contact angle measurement (θ) of PVC and PET at different conditions. Using a full factorial
design procedure, the effects of depressant dosage (i.e., Tanic acid), temperature, and pH were
optimized. The results indicate that at the optimum conditions, separation of PET and PVC by
grade and recovery of more than 99% can be achieved.

REFERENCES:
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[2] Gjergj Dodbiba. Et al., 2008, “The recycling of plastic wastes from discarded TV sets: comparing energy recovery with
mechanical recycling in the context of life cycle assessment”, J. of Cleaner Production 16, pages 458-470.

[3] Masami Tsunekawa et all, 2005, “Jig separation of plastics from scrapped copy machines”, Int. J. Miner. Process. 76

[4] Pavlína Basaˇrová et al, 2005, “The influence of flotation agent concentration on the wettability and flotability of
polystyrene”, J. of Colloid and Interface Science 286, pages 333–338

[5]Huiting Shen, E. Forssberg , R.J. Pugh, 2002, “Selective flotation separation of plastics by chemical conditioning with methyl
cellulose”, J. of Resources, Conservation and Recycling(35).