Recycling of discarded polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is an important issue for both environmental protection and resource conservation purposes. In this work, a dissolution-degradation strategy has been developed for recycling PET by adding solvents such as aniline, nitrobenzene, 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (NMP), or dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) into the traditional PET glycolysis system. The results show that the conversion of PET reaches 100% and the yield of monomer bis(hydroxyalkyl) terephthalate (BHET) reaches 82% during 1 min with zinc acetate as catalyst in DMSO at 463 K. Importantly, this strategy can be applied to a variety of catalysts. The simulation and in situ IR results indicate that the π–π interaction between PET and aromatic solvents plays a key role in PET dissolution, which leads to fast degradation. This promising dissolution-degradation strategy can improve the glycolysis efficiency of PET dramatically and may be applied to the degradation process of other polyesters.

中文翻译：

---

废对苯二甲酸乙二酯通过溶解-降解策略的超快均相糖解

回收废弃的聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯（PET）对于环境保护和资源节约而言都是重要的问题。在这项工作中，已经开发出一种溶解降解策略，通过在传统的PET糖酵解系统中添加苯胺，硝基苯，1-甲基-2-吡咯烷酮（NMP）或二甲基亚砜（DMSO）等溶剂来回收PET。结果表明，以乙酸锌为催化剂，在463 K的DMSO中，PET在1分钟内的转化率达到100％，对苯二甲酸双（羟烷基）酯（BHET）的产率达到82％。各种催化剂。模拟和原位红外结果表明，PET和芳族溶剂之间的π-π相互作用在PET溶解中起关键作用，从而导致降解迅速。