Abstract
The majority of ocean plastic wastes supposedly comes from land-based sources, while the remaining comes from marine-based activities and sources such as lines, fishing nets, abandoned vessels and ropes. In this study, plastic wastes were collected from the sea shore in Chennai, India, and thoroughly characterized to determine their composition and plastic types. Eight out of nineteen samples were polyethylenes (PE), and their thermal stability, functional group and elemental composition were assessed using different techniques. Analytical pyrolysis hyphenated with gas chromatograph/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) was performed to identify impurities and quantify the volatile hydrocarbons. Thermal desorption indicated the presence of fatty acids and plasticizers such as dimethyl and diethyl phthalates in most of the samples. The PE samples varied significantly in terms of their typical decomposition products, and the overall selectivities to alkenes, alkanes and alkadienes were in the range of 44.79–53.15%, 21.77–29.0% and 17.56–22.56%, respectively. The major products, alkenes, were distributed in the carbon number range of C5-C20. Upto 16 wt% of the hydrocarbons in the pyrolysate from various samples were quantified based on carbon number range.
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