A comparative analysis of pyrolytic oil from medical waste and its suitability as fuel in a Compression Ignition engine

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, the pyrolysis technique has been adopted for converting non-degradable materials into biofuels and the yields of this process, oil and gas can be substituted as a fuel in CI engine. In this study, the medical waste plastics such as masks, gloves, personal protective equipment (PPE) kit and other plastics associated with hospitals were seen as the feedstock material for the pyrolysis process. It is collected from Government Medical College Hospital Villupuram, Tamil Nadu, India. The proximate and ultimate characterization of these wastes shows the percentage of volatile matter in the mask, gloves, and PPE kit are 81.2%, 79.3%, and 79.6%, respectively, and carbon percentage lies in the range of 75% to 78%, which ensures that the feedstock can be used in this process. The pyrolysis technique is carried out separately for all the collected feedstock such as mask, glove and other PPE kits. In this research, the mask waste showed a higher pyrolytic oil yield rate and is 80.3 wt% at 350°C than other plastics wastes. Further, FTIR of all the plastic waste confirms that pyrolytic oil is in acidic nature and it contains carboxylic acids and other heavier compounds, which are unstable in nature. To improve the fuel characteristics of pyrolytic oil, blending it with diesel requires the utilization of surfactants such as Span 80, Tween 60 and Atlox 4916. In this analysis, 5% of surfactant is mixed with 15% of pyrolytic oil and 80% of diesel. Among the various surfactants Atlox 4916, shows better fuel properties than other pyrolytic oil of plastic waste used in the analysis. Emulsifier fuel blend is prepared from different pyrolytic oils such as masks, gloves and PPE kit with Atlox 4916 surfactant, and MA, GA and PA, respectively. However, the pyrolytic oil from mask with Atlox 4916 surfactant blend has a (42.26 MJ/kg) higher calorific value. The evaluation of performance and emissions is conducted for the test fuels with surfactants derived from mask (MA), gloves (GA) and PPE (PA). Among these blends, MA showed better results in performance and emission behavior. The BTE of MA is 28.4%, which is 4.69% lower diesel and it is 2.077% and 2.95% higher than blend GA and PA. Blend MA shows lower emissions than other blends.