Thermal pyrolysis of polystyrene aided by a nitroxide end-functionality. Experiments and modeling

Abstract

The thermal pyrolysis of polystyrene (PS) is gaining importance as the social pressure for achieving a circular economy is growing; moreover, the recovery of styrene monomer in such a process is especially relevant. In this study, a simple thermal pyrolysis process in the temperature range of 390-450 °C is developed. A working hypothesis is that by using a nitroxide-end functionalized PS (PS-T or dormant polymer), the initiation process for the production of monomer (unzipping) during the PS pyrolysis could be enhanced due to the tendency of the PS-T to activate at the nitroxide end. Two types of PS were used in this work, the first one was synthesized by free-radical polymerization (FRP-dead polymer) and the second by nitroxide-mediated polymerization (NMP) using three levels of nitroxide to initiator ratio: 1.3, 1.1, and 0.9. Analysis of the recovered products of the pyrolysis by gas-mass spectroscopy shows that the yield of styrene increases from ~33% in the case of dead polymer to ~38.5% for PS-T. A kinetic and mathematical model for the pyrolysis of dead and dormant polymer is proposed and solved by the method of moments. After a parameter sensitivity study and data fitting, the model is capable of explaining the main experimental trends observed.