Recycling of polyethylene terephthalate wastes: A review of technologies, routes, and applications

Abstract With increasing usage of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) wastes polluting the oceans and environment, the recycling of PET wastes has become a crucial issue to be overcome. In this article, a review of the different technologies that have been developed to recycle PET wastes and common routes for recycled PET (rPET) is presented. The impacts of varied recycling technologies on the properties of rPET are also discussed herein. The review also focuses on the recovered products by each of the technology and their uses that have been reincorporated into new applications for example, from plastic bottle wastes to 3D scaffolds for biomedical application. Different recycling technologies such as reactive extrusion, chemical recycling and dissolution/precipitation exhibit specific properties due to the influence of the different concepts from one technology to another. A new trend called electrospinning of rPET to produce nanofibers has also garnered attention to be used for different applications. This article will first introduce the recycling technologies concept, and then the properties of the recovered product will be discussed and finally, we will focus on the applications of rPET produced from each of the technologies in various fields such as construction, textile, filtration, and biomedical applications.