A new recycling technique has been developed which uses a natural solvent, d limonene, to shrink expanded polystyrene (EPS). d-Limonene is a natural vegetable oil which is extracted from the rinds of citrus fruits and is a good solvent of EPS. Limonene has almost the same solubility as toluene at room temperature. This technique reduces the volume of EPS to about 1/20th of the original. Contracted EPS is recyclable with almost no molecular weight degradation because d-limonene acts as an antioxidant of polystyrene during the heating process.
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Noguchi et al. (1998) studied this question.
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