Fragrance Encapsulates: Effect of Polymeric Shell Purification Method on the Accuracy of Biodegradability Testing.

Fragrance encapsulates are widely used in consumer care applications such as fabric softeners or other liquid laundry products; they provide multiple benefits, from fragrance protection in the commercial product to a controlled release and improved sensorial experience for the consumers. Polymeric fragrance encapsulates are in the scope of the EU regulation restricting the use of intentionally added microplastic particles, and industry is actively working on innovation programs to find biodegradable alternatives. However, particular attention needs to be paid to claims that a fragrance encapsulation system is biodegradable, because biodegradation test results can vary considerably depending on how a test material is prepared, which can even lead to false-positive biodegradation test results, as shown in our study. We demonstrate the importance of the sample preparation phase of the process. We show how the biodegradation level can fluctuate from 0% to 91%, depending on how the test material is isolated from a given microcapsule slurry system, and we present a method that can be used to obtain trustworthy biodegradation results. Environ Toxicol Chem 2024;00:1-8. © 2024 Givaudan France SAS. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of SETAC.

Evaluation and comparison of pre-treatment techniques for recovering indium from discarded liquid crystal displays.

Over the last years, emerging incentives for secondary production of high tech-metals, found in e-waste, are created because of their increasing demand and economic issues associated with their primary production. Due to the very low share of these metals in e-waste, pre-treatment methods can result in an output fraction rich in the metals of interest and may, therefore, be essential. To this scope, the present article evaluates and compares the efficiency of four different pre-treatment approaches containing various steps for recovering indium (In) from liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in laptop computers. The pre-treatment steps, used in various combinations, are (a) dry mechanical crushing and sieving, (b) pyrolysis, (c) thermal shock and (d) gravimetric process. Also, in all approaches, liquid crystals were removed from the samples, before applying the mechanical crushing step, as these are toxic and potentially harmful to human health and the environment. The removal was achieved by ultrasonic irradiation or mild agitation and optimized in terms of time, temperature and solvent type and concentration. Then, the feasibility of each pre-treatment approach was evaluated based on two parameters: (a) the content of In in the resulting sample after pre-treatment and (b) the separated mass share (%) with larger indium content as compared to the original LCD panel. The results showed that In is highly liberated in the fractions consisting of finest particles (<25 µm and <53 µm) after dry mechanical crushing and sieving with a maximum content of 234 mg/kg, which is twice as much as in the raw material. However, these particles represented only about 14 wt% of the original LCD panel mass. On the contrary, thermal shock results indicated that this was the most efficient pre-treatment approach, as both the content of In and the separated LCD mass (%) remained in high levels. Finally, some economic aspects associated with the processes are presented.