SELECTIVE SEPARATION OF PLASTICS WASTES BY USING COLUMN FLOTATION

The disposal of waste materials has become an important issue in today ' s society. Environmental concerns associated with disposal of waste materials, for example, have made recycling of materials a popular alternative to landfills and burning. Polymers constitute a large percentage of waste materials. Today, most of practical methods used for recycling of plastics such as hand sorting, gravity separation etc. cannot be performed successfully due to both PET and PVC have densities between 1.32 and 1.37 g/cm(3). The aim of this research is to achieve the selective flotation of post-consumed PET and PVC using lignin alkali and calcium lignosulphonate type plasticizers by column flotation. According to the results, almost all PET particles were concentrated with 99,98% recovery.