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the degradation and secondary reactions. However, benzene used as supercritical solvent to depolymerise polystyrene gave more side-products than toluene, though benzene had less effect on the secondary reaction, which implied that benzene changed the process of degradation. Furthermore, more secondary reactions occurred at the expense of the primary products using ethylbenzene and p-xylene as supercritical solvents. Table 5. The decomposition products obtained from the reaction of styrene in different supercritical solvents at 370 C
Compositio ns (wt.%) Benzene + styre ne Toluene + styre ne pXylene + styre ne Feed 0 0 0 83.2 16.3 0 Product 1.75 0.55 0.49 86.0 10.6 0.11 Ethylbenzene + styre ne
The pressure of PS degradation in supercritical benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and p-xylene was 4.9 MPa, 3.8 MPa, 3.5 MPa and 3.4 MPa, respectively.
In summary, the use of supercritical solvents changed the reaction mechanism of polystyrene degradation due to the closed system. All the supercritical solvents increased the rate of polystyrene degradation while affecting the reaction mechanism differently. Moreover, among the solvents used in our work, toluene was founded to be the most effective to recover styrene from polystyrene.