Characterization of fuel produced by pyrolysis of plastic film obtained of municipal solid waste

Abstract

The plastics have produced a lot of serious environmental problems because there are large quantities of which the majority ends up in landfills or even in the seas. In addition, they are produced from exhaustible fossil fuels. For these reasons, recycling plastics is an alternative which may reduce environmental problems and resource depletion. Currently, the most common technique used for chemical recycling of plastics is pyrolysis. In this work, the pyrolysis process was carried out on a plastic waste (polyethylene film) from the fraction not collected selectively, with the aim of obtaining a liquid fuel. Both physical and chemical characterization of different oil samples was performed, which were obtained under different operating conditions. The main objective was to determine the quality of the fuel and whether this quality depended on the operating conditions used. It was determined that the properties of the fuel studied do not vary depending on the operating conditions used. The physical and chemical characteristics of the oil samples were very similar to those of commercial fuels (gasoline and diesel), with the exception of viscosity because the fuel studied has not been fractionated and therefore has light and heavy naphthas.