Abstract:
Waste rigid polyurethane foam was chemical recycled by glycolysis and aminolysis using DEA and DETA as decomposers, respectively. The obtained products were characterized by FT-IR, NMR, GPC and HPLC techniques. It was found that the decomposed products were mainly mixtures of low molecular weight aliphatic secondary amine polyols and aromatic primary amine, MDA. Since it was very difficult and complicated to separate and purify polyols and amines from the decomposed products, such mixtures were used directly as epoxy curing agent without further purification. Tensile strength of epoxy resin cured with aminolyzed products was higher than that cured with glycolyzed products. Furthermore, hardness of all completely cured samples was slightly different and was in the range of 75-90 shore D. Thermal properties of cured epoxy samples were characterized by DSC and TGA techniques. The results showed that there was no T[subscript g] for all specimens and the degradation temperatures were in the range of 300-400°C.