AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF NYLON RECYCLING AND ITS MODIFICATION USING HALOGEN BASED METAL HALIDES

Drastic increase of the plastics demand over the last decade was in conjunction with the increasing population globally and their need to adopt better living conditions. While the consumption is increasing, the amount of plastics waste is piling up at the same time due to less efforts done for recovery of used plastic products and thus, causing plastic pollution. Post-industrial and domestic plastics were disposed mainly by landfill disposal and energy recovery with incinerators. Instead of disposing, recycling of plastics product is deemed more suitable. Chemical recycling of polyamide is studied in this project using formic acid and lithium chloride solvent system. Waste nylon product available in market is collected and identified using Fourier Transform Infrared Ray (FTIR) spectroscopy and melting point temperature determination. The percentage recovery of the recycled nylon is at the range of 98 % - 99 % after filtration. The presence of lithium chloride in the solvent system helps in altering the mechanical properties by bonding of lithium ions with the amide groups during dissolution, which has enhanced the tensile yield strength of the recycled nylon by 14.09 %.