Production of fuels by pyrolysis of waste plastics: technical notes

Abstract

This paper described the plant scale catalytic process of the plastic waste materials in order to obtain an alternative fuel from three plastic wastes Polypropylene (PP), Polystyrene (PS) and Polyethylene (PE). Pyrolysis is the thermochemical decomposition of plastics at elevated temperatures (in absence or little supply of oxygen) into a range of useful products: gas, liquid, and solid residue. These waste have plastics consisting of PP, PE and PS, are first sorted manually and crushed by using crusher and finally feed in the reactor enclosed in the burner maintaining the reaction temperature about 500°C. Nitrogen gas is used to create inert environment and for fluidization in reactor. The produced cracked gas is now sent to be condensed to a condenser followed by the series of cyclone separator and electrostatic precipitator then finally feed into the liquid vapor separator. The plastic pyrolysis plant is design of capacity 3.2 tons of plastics each day, obtained 80% gaseous fuel and 7% Liquid and remaining as residue. The variation of yield of the products according to increase in temperature is also shown in this paper.