20.500.12556/DKUM-92259 Economical chemical recycling of complex PET waste in the form of active packaging material Since millions of tons of packaging material cannot be recycled in conventional ways, most of it ends up in landfills or even dumped into the natural environment. The researched methods of chemical depolymerization therefore open a new perspective for the recycling of various PET materials, which are especially important for packaging. Food preservative packaging materials made from PET plastics are complex, and their wastes are often contaminated, so there are no sophisticated solutions for them in the recycling industry. After integrating the biopolymer chitosan, which is derived from natural chitin, as an active surface additive in PET materials, we discovered that it not only enriches the packaging material as a microbial inhibitor to reduce the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, thus extending the shelf life of the contained food, but also enables economical chemical recycling by alkaline or neutral hydrolysis, which is an environmentally friendly process. Alkaline hydrolysis at a high temperature and pressure completely depolymerizes chitosan-coated PET packaging materials into pure terephthalic acid and charcoal. The products were characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and elemental analysis. The resulting reusable material represents raw materials in chemical, plastic, textile, and other industries, in addition to the antimicrobial function and recyclability itself. chitosan active packaging PET recycling reusability hitozan aktivna embalaža recikliranje ponovna uporaba true false true MDPI AG Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik https://www.mdpi.com/journal/polymers © 2022 by the authors Članek v reviji 2025-03-26 08:54:19 2025-03-26 08:54:19 2025-03-27 03:11:50 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2022 0 0 str. 1-15 iss. 16 (3244) Vol. 14 Aug. 2022 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 2022-07-20 2022-08-06 2022-08-09 678:577 119122947 10.3390/polym14163244 2073-4360 polymers-14-03244-v3.pdf polymers-14-03244-v3.pdf 1 8FC9B3AFBC5BEB0AA9EEA6D2B6E83EFB 5d64545790b9a69ee756f61f6fc06b8aecfb6c00b47dde8860023cb07cbb777d 4d7dac1a-0a18-11f0-af23-00155d000105 https://dk.um.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=189655 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/14/16/3244 0 522683b7-0a18-11f0-af23-00155d000105 https://dk.um.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=189656 Fakulteta za strojništvo 0 0 0