The influence of bio-plastics for food packaging on combined anaerobic digestion and composting treatment of organic municipal waste.

The use of bio-plastic-based packaging as an alternative to conventional plastic packaging is increasing. Among the plethora of different bio-based plastics, the most relevant ones are those that, at the end of their life, can be treated with the organic fraction of municipal solid waste. Even in these cases, their impact on the waste processing and recycling is not always positive.

Valorization of the plastic residue from a WEEE treatment plant by pyrolysis.

The possibility of a pyrolysis process as a mean of recycling the residual plastic rich fraction (WEEE residue) derived from of a material recovery facility has been evaluated. The unknown product composition of WEEE residue has been supposed through coupled thermal - infrared analysis and ultimate analysis and resulted as PP 3 wt%, PBT 3 wt%, PVC 4 wt%, styrene-based polymers (principally ABS) 50 wt%, thermosetting resins (principally, epoxy/phenolic resins) 24 wt%, inorganic fraction (principally fiber glass) 16 wt%. DSC experiments showed that the overall energy, defined as the degradation heat, needed in order to completely degrade WEEE residue was about 4% of the exploitable energy of the input material.

Thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of a mixture of plastics from small waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

Pyrolysis seems a promising route for recycling of heterogeneous, contaminated and additives containing plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). This study deals with the thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of a synthetic mixture containing real waste plastics, representative of polymers contained in small WEEE. Two zeolite-based catalysts were used at 400°C: HUSY and HZSM-5 with a high silica content, while three different temperatures were adopted for the thermal cracking: 400, 600 and 800°C.

General and practical conversion of aldehydes to homologated carboxylic acids.

The reaction of aldehydes with trichloromethide followed by sodium borohydride or sodium phenylseleno(triethyl)borate under basic conditions affords homologated carboxylic acids in high yields. This operationally simple procedure provides a practical, efficient alternative to other homologation protocols. The approach is compatible with sensitive aldehydes including enals and enolizable aldehydes.