The aim of this study is to develop a one-pot and environmentally friendly approach to recycle polyurethane foams (PUF) via reactive compounding with diethanolamine (DEA) in a melt-mixer. DEA was used as a decomposing agent to destroy the crosslink structure of PUF. The degraded products which have low molecular weight can be used as a plasticizer without any purification to improve molecular mobility of polyurethane. As a result, the thermosetting PUF was converted to thermoplastic regenerated polyurethanes (RPU). This method showed great improvement in cost efficiency comparing to other frequently used reclaiming method of PUF. The structural development of PUF during reactive compounding was investigated in detail. The results indicated that the gel content of PUF decreased significantly from its original 19.6% to 2.3% after reactive compounding with 0.5 phr DEA, demonstrating the decrosslinking of PUF. The prepared RPU showed excellent mechanical properties with the tensile strength of 13.7 MPa and elongation at break of 158.9%. This facile and low-cost reactive compounding approach is suitable for large-scale application and is expected to achieve value-added utilization of PU wastes.
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