Coloured PET Recycling - My Understanding in 30 Minutes.

First off, it is a shock to me that until now we have only been able to recycle colourless PET... I actually did not know this! It always seems like everything in the world has been figured out, and everything has been thought of with the 7 billion people on this Earth... But that is not the case! Coloured PET has always been made into lower quality materials or put into incinerators which basically burns the plastic so landfills are not wasted. Yet, from my understanding the company Ioniqa has now been able to scaled up their process of recycling coloured PET, which seems to be a pretty big deal! The company expects their recycled PET to be as good as the PET that is from petroleum sources. 

My understanding is that the process works in the following way:

• The environment for the process has to have atmospheric pressure and temperatures between 150-200 degrees.
• You then add magnetic fluid and Ethylene Glycol (EG) to the coloured PET, which depolymerises the PET and releases colorants into the reaction mixture.
• Magnetic separation is the next step, which removes the colorant with magnetic fluid.
• You are then left with the raw material of PET

… of course this is the simplified version that I have read, I’m sure the actual process is a lot more complex.

Nonetheless, this is a great move towards consideration of the environment and looking into green processes and creation of renewable resource processes. Many companies which use a lot of PET will be most likely be considering this process once it starts to run, hopefully, in 2017. Perhaps we will be able to reach one of the Global Goals, climate change and using sustainable consumption and production , that were set almost a week ago by the United Nations.  

Sources used:
[1] http://www.tcetoday.com/latest%20news/2015/september/engineers-plan-world-first-pet-recycling.aspx#.Vg2aV2RViko