Recycling PET (polyethylene terephthalate) soda bottle wastes to produce carpet fibers

The problem of plastics wastes has increased tremendously since the use of plastics increased in more than one application increasing in return the amount of wastes. The possible ways for handling these wastes include landfilling, reusing through chemical recycling techniques, mechanical recycling and reprocessing into a new product, or finally incineration to get energy out of it . In Egypt, recycling takes place for a number of plastic items, but no recycling efforts are yet established for the PET plastic bottles used for soda beverages. It is the concern of this thesis therefore, to find a solution for these unused wastes by mechanically recycling them mixed with virgin PP(polypropylene) to be further used in carpet industry. The choice of the final product was based on the fact that PET is already used in fiber form with great success, it makes a good combination with PP, and the idea would be economically successful since the carpet industry in Egypt is quite large. The focus used in this thesis, is on mixing different percentages of recycled PET with PP with an additive to enhance the properties of PET with PP mix, and experimenting on the ideal pressure and injection time during injection molding. The new mix was tested for mechanical properties, melt flow index, and its resistance to chemical reagents. The additive used proved to enhance the properties to a great extent, and the mix was not affected by the detergent used to test its chemical resistance . These tests showed that the addition of PET to PP is indeed beneficial with some procedure that should be done for further improvement of properties