PET does not degrade in nature and has a low recycling rate, especially if it is colored or blended, resulting in a large amount of plastic waste 7, 8. As a large class of plastics, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is widely used in various containers, packaging materials, and textiles 4, 5, with a production scale of more than 70 million tons per year 6. Plastics have become an important material in the modern global consumer economy, and the production is estimated to increase to around 12 billion tons by 2050 1, 2, 3. Life cycle assessment shows that, compared with the existing commercialized chemical recycling methods, acetolysis offers a low-carbon pathway to achieve the full upcycling of waste polyethylene terephthalate. In addition, Ethylene glycol diacetate can be hydrolyzed to ethylene glycol or directly polymerized with terephthalic acid to form polyethylene terephthalate, completing the closed-loop recycling. Since acetic acid can dissolve or decompose other components such as dyes, additives, blends, etc., Terephthalic acid can be crystallized out in a high-purity form. Here we report a new efficient method for acetolysis of waste polyethylene terephthalate into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol diacetate in acetic acid. However, the existing recycling methods cannot process colored or blended polyethylene terephthalate materials for upcycling.
To reduce environmental pollution and reliance on fossil resources, polyethylene terephthalate as the most consumed synthetic polyester needs to be recycled effectively.
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