Recycling of acrylic plastics: understanding how to achieve virgin-quality monomer product from chemical recycling technologies.

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First year mainly focussed on attending credit bearing modules. The aim of the PhD project will be to gain better understanding of how both microwave and conventional heating technologies can be used to process waste plastic and produce monomer product that is of sufficient quality to re-use in acrylic manufacture. Working with the industry partner, other PhD students and project team members the successful candidate will establish and model concepts for refining feedstock and crude monomer to the required quality, where challenges will be around variable feedstock composition and the separation of close-boiling components. These refining processes will be combined with new technologies for acrylic recycling to produce a number of system-level process models that can be used to establish feedstock-technology-product relationships. These models will in turn be used to direct technology development for recycling processes and to develop a broader industry implementation strategy for recycled acrylic, optimising the acrylic circular value chain.