Recycling
of discarded polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is an important
issue for both environmental protection and resource conservation
purposes. In this work, a dissolution-degradation strategy has been
developed for recycling PET by adding solvents such as aniline, nitrobenzene,
1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (NMP), or dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) into
the traditional PET glycolysis system. The results show that the conversion
of PET reaches 100% and the yield of monomer bis(hydroxyalkyl) terephthalate
(BHET) reaches 82% during 1 min with zinc acetate as catalyst in DMSO
at 463 K. Importantly, this strategy can be applied to a variety of
catalysts. The simulation and in situ IR results indicate that the
π–π interaction between PET and aromatic solvents
plays a key role in PET dissolution, which leads to fast degradation.
This promising dissolution-degradation strategy can improve the glycolysis
efficiency of PET dramatically and may be applied to the degradation
process of other polyesters.