Progress in recycling and reutilization of waste polyethylene terephthalate

Abstract

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a versatile material with a wide range of applications, and the demand for PET products has been steadily increasing in recent years. This has generated large quantities of non-biodegradable PET waste. To reduce environmental pollution, recycling and reuse of waste PET is an economical solution. Different PET products vary greatly in their impurity contents, processing technology, and performance, which poses certain challenges for the recovery, purification, and reuse of PET waste in a high value-added manner. Various recycling and reutilization methods are compared, potential issues with different PET products in the recycling process are analyzed, and viscosity enhancement modification techniques and applications of recycled PET are introduced. This paper provides a reference for the recycling of various waste PET products.