A method to recycle the common plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from fizzy drinks bottles into membranes for filtration, including cigarette filter tips, has been developed by scientists in Sweden and the US. The process involves dissolving PET in a solvent mixture of trifluoroacetic acid and dichloromethane, which is then electrospun to produce fibre mats to be used as filters.
PET is widely recycled into engineered plastics, automobiles, fleece fabric, containers and films, however some applications such as protective clothing and membrane separation and filtration still use the more expensive virgin PET. This work, which stemmed from a collaboration between researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the University of Illinois, provides a proof-of-concept for synthesising filters from recycled PET to give cigarette filters which absorb up to 20 times more cigarette smoke than classic filter tips.
Interested? The full article can be read at Chemistry World.
The original article can be read below:
Electrospinning of recycled PET to generate tough mesomorphic fibre membranes for smoke filtration
I. N. Strain, Q. Wu, A. M. Pourrahimi, M. S. Hedenqvist, R. T. Olsson and R. L. Andersson
J. Mater. Chem. A, 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C4TA06191H
The filtration capacities of the fibre mats were tested using a cigarette as the smoke source
