Conversion of waste plastics into low emissive hydrocarbon fuel using catalyst produced from biowaste
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GREEN TECHNOLOGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE WATER
Conversion of waste plastics into low emissive hydrocarbon fuel using catalyst produced from biowaste Nandakumar Jahnavi 1 & Kumar Kanmani 1 & Ponnusamy Senthil Kumar 1 & Sunita Varjani 2 Received: 21 May 2020 / Accepted: 23 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Among the prevalent methods already in existence for the plastic waste management, catalytic pyrolysis has been proved to be an efficient one. The research work involved the synthesis of the catalyst from eucalyptus seeds, a commercially available agricultural waste product aided in pyrolysis. The raw eucalyptus seeds were cleaned, powdered, and surface-modified using sulphuric acid. Analysis of the surface-reformed eucalyptus seeds showed that they possess the characteristics equivalent to the activated carbon and micropores similar to that of zeolite which is used as a catalyst for pyrolysis. Hence, the prepared catalyst was used in the pyrolysis process and its performance was compared with that of the commercial activated carbon and zeolite. Zeolite Y generally lowers the temperature of the pyrolysis reaction to 180–190 °C, while the produced catalyst made the pyrolysis reaction possible between 120 and 130 °C. The output of the pyrolysis reaction was a hydrocarbon oil, which was analysed using gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID). The oil was found to have a composition between C6 and C20, which includes petroleum, kerosene, and diesel. Hence, the oil obtained was proven to be more useful, as a fuel for locomotive and reheating purposes. Keywords Catalytic pyrolysis . Zeolite . Polypropylene . Eucalyptus seeds . Activated Carbon . Plastic wastes . Alternative Fuel
Introduction With the ever-increasing population and fuel consumption rates coupled with an increase in energy prices, there is a need to find alternative sources of energy. Besides, the limited reserves of fossil fuels magnify the necessity of fossil fuel replacement. Moreover, the easy availability of plastics and versatility in its usage has caused the increase in the consumption of it (Patnaik et al. 2020). In many fields such as agriculture, transportation, and construction, plastic plays a major role because of its low cost and availability (Kunwar et al. 2016).
Responsible Editor: Ta Yeong Wu * Ponnusamy Senthil Kumar [email protected]; [email protected] * Sunita Varjani [email protected] 1
Department of Chemical Engineering, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Chennai 603110, India
2
Gujarat Pollution Control Board, Sector-10A, Gandhinagar, Gujarat 382010, India
Currently, about 40% of the plastics are used for the recovery of energy, about 30% recycled, and approximately 30% landfilled (Fivga and Dimitriou 2018). It is estimated that about 52% of the plastics is consumed solely by the packaging industry (Ranadhir et al. 2016; Sharuddin et al. 2018; Bungay 2017). The plastics are currently managed by techniques such as reusing, recycling, waste-to
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