Project thumbnail image
College of Engineering Unit: 
Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering
Project Team Member(s): 
Franchesca Tran, Makayla Vu, Tony Le and Sophie Wojcik
Project ID: 
CHE 23
Project Description: 

PVC constitutes 7% of yearly plastic waste, with increasing amounts expected due to its use in construction for long-lasting products. Current waste management methods include landfill, incineration, and mechanical recycling. Chemical recycling attempts like VinylLoop in Italy used a dissolution process with PVC-specific solvent, but faced closure due to phthalate content. A new catalytic process by Svadlenak et. al. uses a heterogeneous catalyst and hydrogen gas to dechlorinate PVC and produce polyethylene wax. This project aims to scale up the process to an industrial scale, perform economic analysis, and model the polyethylene wax product as linear C40. The EPA estimates 910,000 tons of post-consumer PVC in the US annually, with less than 0.25% recycled. The plant will be designed to process 3200 tons of PVC per year, equivalent to recycling rates of 160 million pounds per year. Experimental data from Svadlenak et. al. includes material balance, reaction kinetics, yield/selectivity/conversions, and heat transfer with wax.


Industry Sponsor(s): 
  • David Allen

    • Project Communication Piece(s): 
    AttachmentSize
    PDF icon repvc_towards_a_greener_future_che_23.pdf2.95 MB
    Opportunities: 
    This team is open to networking
    This team is open to collaboration opportunities
    This team is open to employment offers

    This team accepts email messages from attendees: 
    tranfr@oregonstate.edu