Chemie Ingenieur Technik, Vol.73, No.3, 183-190, 2001
Chemical (tertiary) recycling of fibreglass reinforced polyamide-6
It is well known that polyamide 6 (PA-6) can be depolymerised to regenerate caprolactam monomer by treatment with phosphoric acid, and can thus be subjected to tertiary recycling (= according ASTM D 5033-90: the process technologies of producing chemicals from scrap or waste plastics). However, broad general application of this process - widely used in industrial practice especially for PA-6 fibre waste - to fibreglass-reinforced or filled PA-6 is precluded by the fact that phosphoric acid reacts with the fillers. This causes a high phosphoric acid consumption; moreover, the method gives an unsatisfactory yield of caprolactam (around 56 %) and also requires costly disposal of phosphorus-containing waste. Therefore, processes have been developed for tertiary recycling of fibreglass-reinforced or filled polyamide 6, which plays an important role as an engineering plastic. Two different processes have been investigated, viz. hydrolytic depolymerisation and catalysed depolymerisation in vacuum.