Nylon Recycling Processes: a Brief Overview

Plastic pollution is a significant environmental issue, and recycling has been identified as one of the ways to reduce its impact. This review provides therefore a brief overview of the various processes involved in recycling of polyamide plastic waste. Nylon is a material extensively utilized in the creation of clothes, textiles, and other products thanks to its high mechanical and thermal properties, as well as its strength and durability. This latter feature turns in a very slow decomposition if polyamide-based objects are abandoned in the environment, making it a significant environmental pollutant. The review covers all the possible recycling processes for this material, that are mechanical recycling, which involves shredding and melting plastic waste to make new products, solvent dissolution, where a solvent selectively dissolved only the desired polymer leaving behind the unwanted impurities, and chemical recycling, which uses chemical reactions to break down plastic waste into its chemical constituent parts, i.e. Monomers. The advantages and limitations of these processes are discussed.