Volume 142, Issue 10 e56553
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Chemical Recycling of Used PI/PTFE Sandwich Composite Filter Bags

Feng Dai

Feng Dai

Filter Test Center, School of Resources & Civil Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China

Contribution: Conceptualization (lead), Data curation (lead), Formal analysis (lead), Writing - original draft (lead)

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Jingxian Liu

Corresponding Author

Jingxian Liu

Filter Test Center, School of Resources & Civil Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China

Correspondence:

Jingxian Liu ([email protected]; [email protected])

Contribution: Project administration (supporting)

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First published: 05 December 2024

Funding: This work was sponsored by National Major Science and Technology Projects of China (Grant 2022YFC2503201), National Natural Science Foundation of China-Liaoning Joint Fund (CN) (52174215), Talent plan of Liaoning Province (XLYC2002091), Liaoning Province takes the lead in tackling key scientific and technological problems (2021JH1/10400023), Major Project of Zhejiang Province (2020C03089).

ABSTRACT

Recycling is a major approach to addressing resource waste and environmental pollution issues, but it remains a challenge to recycling of the polyimide/polytetrafluoroethylene (PI/PTFE) sandwich composites. In this work, an efficient process for recycling PI/PTFE composite filter bags was proposed, which mainly included pretreatment, pre-hydrolysis, separation, recovery, and reuse. First, the effect of washing pretreatment of used composite needle felt was evaluated by SEM and EDS characterization. Then the strength of the PI fibers was decreased by pre-hydrolysis so that the PI could be easily separated with PTFE. The effect of hydrolysis time on the mass loss rate of PI, peel strength of PI with PTFE, and tensile strength of PTFE was systematically investigated. Finally, the PI was depolymerized into monomers in an alkaline solution. This method successfully realizes the recycling of used PI/PTFE composite filter bags, and the waste liquid generated can be recycled and reused. Moreover, the recycled ODA and PMA were used to prepare PI films by thermal imidization. The tensile strength and elongation at break of the PI recycled films were 107.6 MPa and 7.8%, respectively, and the films had excellent thermal stability. The recycling of used PI/PTFE composite filter bags avoids wasting resources.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Data Availability Statement

The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials. Additionally, all data analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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