Preparation and testing of a solid secondary plasticizer for PVC produced by chemical degradation of post-consumer PET

Post-consumer poly(ethylene therephthalate) (PET) obtained from milled water bottles was chemically degraded by glycolysis, using suitable amounts of diethylene glycol (DEG) and Ca/Zn stearate as catalyst system. The process was carried out by employing a melt mixer as the chemical reactor, which is the facility generally used for plastic compounding. The degraded PET products were first characterized from structural and thermal point of view by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR), Size exclusion chromatography (SEC) Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and thereafter used alone or together with di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) in poly(vinyl chloride) PVC formulations. The plasticization was, in fact, accomplished by using a binary system consisting of DEHP as primary plasticizer and a degraded PET product as secondary plasticizer (SP). The obtained materials were characterized through the main methods used to assess flexible PVC compounds: hardness in Shore A scale, thermal properties and quantitative migration of the plasticizer. The solid secondary plasticizer obtained from post-consumer PET improves both the processing characteristics and the thermal stability of the final flexible PVC compounds while maintaining their hardness within the top values of the Shore A scale. In addition, a considerable reduction of the plasticizers migration (23%) was obtained by optimizing the formulation.