Glycolysis of flexible polyurethane wastes containing polymeric polyols

Nowadays polymer recycling processes are an urgent task due to the huge quantity of wastes that are generated. Polyurethane is the 6th polymer most used all over the world with a production of approximately 12 million tons per year. Flexible foams represent about the half of polyurethane total production and among them conventional polyurethane flexible foams mean the 80%. This type of foams are synthesized or using only a flexible polyether polyol or a mix of a flexible polyether polyol with a polymeric polyol. A series of works about the glycolysis of flexible foams synthesized only with flexible polyether polyol have been carried out by our research group. In this work, for the first time in literature, a detailed study of the glycolysis of flexible polyurethane foams containing polymeric polyol has been accomplished. It has been demonstrated that is possible to carry out the glycolysis of these foams using similar reactions conditions determined for the glycolysis of conventional flexible polyurethane foams synthesized only with flexible polyether polyol. Furthermore, after a proper treatment process of the recovered polyol, flexible polyurethane foams have been synthesized using mixtures of raw polyol with the recovered one.