Synthesis and Characterization of Aluminum Containing Silica Aerogel Catalysts for Degradation of PLA

Aluminum loaded silica aerogel based catalysts were synthesized by impregnation of aluminum into silica aerogel produced using sol-gel method in different aluminum loadings (2.5–15 wt%) to investigate their performances in degradation of polylactic acid (PLA). Synthesized catalysts showed Type IV is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of chemical reactor engineering Vol. 17; no. 5
Main Authors Sivri, Seda, Dilek, Cerag, Sezgi, Naime Aslı
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published De Gruyter 27.05.2019
Subjects
aluminum
degradation
PLA
polylactic acid
pyrolysis
recycling
silica aerogel
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Summary:Aluminum loaded silica aerogel based catalysts were synthesized by impregnation of aluminum into silica aerogel produced using sol-gel method in different aluminum loadings (2.5–15 wt%) to investigate their performances in degradation of polylactic acid (PLA). Synthesized catalysts showed Type IV isotherm with H1 hysteresis which indicates the mesoporosity of the materials. They have demonstrated favorable properties in terms of high surface area (743–510 m /g), pore volume (1.79–0.69 cm /g), and pore diameter (6.38–3.60 nm) depending on aluminum loading amounts. Thermogravimetric analysis demonstrated that metal loaded silica aerogel catalysts have an influence on degradation profile of PLA. A noticeable reduction in the activation energy for the PLA degradation was attained with an increase in aluminum loading. These findings show that silica aerogel catalysts are promising for the recycling processes of PLA with their pore characteristics and their acidity affect the degradation performance significantly.
ISSN:1542-6580
1542-6580
DOI:10.1515/ijcre-2018-0163